Description

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In the second half of 2020 and continuing into 2021, protests against racial injustice spread across the United States after the death of George Floyd while in the custody of Minneapolis Police Department officers. Members of the press covered these demonstrations, documenting what transpired and conveying the important messages involved. In so doing, the news media held law enforcement accountable through critical reporting on the actions of the police, with police officers responding in part by intimidating journalists in the field using force and arrest—this in the name of keeping the peace and protecting the public from further harm.
 
What transpired during this troubled time cast a bright light on the contemporary relationship between the press and police in the United States. The relationship between these two fundamental institutions is, however, a long and complicated one, dating back to colonial British North America. In the mid-19th century, (1830s–1850s) both the press and the police began to take their modern forms, and since then have continued to develop, routinely interacting with each other as journalists and police officers often found themselves responding to the same crimes and events. At times, members of both institutions managed to co-exist or even cooperate and made efforts to help one another, while at other times they butted heads to the point of conflict, the professional boundaries between journalists and police officers seemingly blurred.
 
As both the press and the police have fallen under deep scrutiny in more modern times, the present moment marks what is, perhaps, an opportune time to focus on the political, economic, social, and technological problems they face. In “Pressing the Police and Policing the Press,” Scott Memmel offers the first book-length study of the history and legal landscape of the press-police relationship. Each chapter focuses on interactions between the press and the police during a particular era, introducing relevant societal context and how both institutions evolved and responded to that context. Memmel concludes his study with recommendations on how, going forward, the press and the police might work together to tackle some of the similar issues they face and better serve the public.
 

About the Author

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Scott Memmel, Ph.D., is Adjunct Professor at the Marquette University Diederich College of Communication and the recipient of the 2021 Nafziger-White-Salwen Dissertation Award, the highest honor bestowed by the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication for student scholarship for his Ph.D. dissertation. In 2020 he also received the Ralph D. Casey Dissertation Research Award from the University of Minnesota Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication. He lives in Brookfield, Wisconsin.

 

Praise For…

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"Scott Memmel has thoroughly documented and meaningfully disentangled the often-fraught relationship between police and the press. Using historical and legal methods, he illuminates how cooperation and contention between law enforcement and news media can have both positive and negative effects. This book is an important contribution to an area of journalism studies that has received insufficient attention despite vast implications for the daily lives of citizens. Coverage of law enforcement is a staple of American news, yet few scholars have interrogated the press-police relationship with the depth and care Memmel offers." — Kathleen Bartzen Culver, University of Wisconsin-Madison
 

"In a work that is both timely and detailed, in Pressing the Police and Policing the Press Scott Memmel examines the long history of the relationship between the press and the police in U.S. history. Although the relationship between the press and police dates back to the colonial era, Memmel’s work explores its highs and lows, suggesting that at times interaction between journalists and cops has been adversarial, but just as often, and sometimes even problematically, has been a cooperative partnership. Memmel’s award-winning research takes a deep dive into press and police interactions using individual examples, as well as larger historical trends to build on his central thesis that press and police interactions recently have become more antagonistic." — Christopher Terry, Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication