United States: Pulitzer winner photojournalist sprayed and attacked by police in Minneapolis

June 12, 2020, Minneapolis, MN-- Carolyn Cole, a Los Angeles Times photographer, was covering the protests in Minneapolis on May 31st when the police moved to disperse a crowd. A group of roughly 20 journalists standing apart from the protesters moved aside, but the police attacked them directly with pepper spray and rubber bullets, she said. A colleague, the reporter Molly Hennessy-Fiske, shouted, “We’re reporters!”

Cole was wearing a press pass around her neck and a flak jacket with “TV” on it but she was pepper-sprayed in her left ear and eye, and her cornea was damaged, she said.

“I’ve been covering conflict both nationally and internationally for many years, so I know the dangers involved in these situations, especially when you get between riot police and protesters,” Cole wrote in her coverage in Los Angeles Times, “but I wasn’t expecting them to attack us directly.”

Carolyn Cole is a staff photographer for the Los Angeles Times. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography in 2004 for her coverage of the siege of Monrovia in 2003, the capital of Liberia.

Demonstrations sparked across United States after murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, in the pursuit of justice. With numerous police forces deployed to protest sites, journalists face constant threat of violence, arrest and censorship. Hundreds of journalists have reported to have faced attempts at censorship, verbal attacks, blatant threats and police violence. Hundreds of journalists have been arrested while on duty and black journalists who take the ongoing civil unrest very personally are especially targeted. CFWIJ follows the events closely with great concern.