Seattle reporter's jailhouse view

By: Joe Strupp p-I scribe gets inside scoop after seattle trade 'show' arrest By

When Seattle Post-Intelligencer reporter Kery Murakami was arrested last week amid the tear gas and pepper spray of protests outside the World Trade Organization conference in Seattle, he didn't let little things like handcuffs and jail cells stop him from doing his job.
Although Murakami was quick to call his editors after his Nov. 30 arrest, he also took note along the way about how police were treating the arrested, how numerous innocent bystanders were being rounded up with the truly violent rioters, and what it was like for a local college student to spend a night in jail.
After being released the next morning, Murakami turned his experience into a first-person account that editors published Dec. 2 on Page One of the metro section. After telling readers how three police officers "slammed me to the pavement, handcuffed me, and threw me into a van," Murakami wrote that his effort to show his press credentials to the cops proved fruitless and he was charged with failing to disperse.
"I'd been tear-gassed six times that day," he wrote in the story, which included descriptions of how police fingerprinted Murakami and took his shoelaces."
Murakami's story was a highlight of the stepped-up coverage provided by both the morning Post-Intelligencer and the afternoon Seattle Times, the P-I's joint operating agreement partner and crosstown rival.
"We've had a number of people cuffed and released after police checked their IDs," said Bill Ristow, metro editor of the Times. "The more serious thing, though, is that police were not allowing anyone to possess gas masks in the curfew and exclusion zones. That was essential for [reporters] to do their jobs."
Ristow said police backed off on the gas-mask restrictions late last week.
On the circulation side, Ana De Give, the single-copy operations manager for both papers, was finding the whole thing rather bittersweet. She said the busy news week allowed a 20% to 30% increase in single-copy production, but also caused difficulties for some delivery trucks.
"In some cases we have to have people get to them by foot because the trucks can't get through downtown," said De Give. "We had some people tear-gassed and one truck graffitied, but we kept restacking."
(Editor & Publisher WebSite:http:www.mediainfo.com) [Caption]
(copyright: Editor & Publisher December 4, 1999) [Caption]