Ars Technica | Photography Is Not a Crime | Miami New Times
Miami photojournalist Carlos Miller was acquitted Wednesday of resisting an officer, after police tried to prevent him from covering an Occupy protest in January. Timothy B. Lee reports:

After Miller's January arrest, the police confiscated his camera and deleted some of his footage, including video documenting his encounter with the police. That may prove to be an expensive mistake. Miller was able to recover the footage, which proved helpful in winning his acquittal. He says his next step will be to file a lawsuit charging that the deletion of the footage violated his constitutional rights.

Miami Herald TV critic Glenn Garvin testified he'd been at the scene alongside Miller, and that arresting officer Nancy Perez had told Garvin he wouldn't be arrested. Lee writes that "An e-mail disclosed during the trial showed the police had been monitoring Miller's Facebook page and had sent out a notice warning officers in charge of evicting the Occupy Miami protestors that Miller was planning to cover the process." (more...)

Josh Stearns rounds up reports of journalists getting arrested at Monday's anniversary protests for Occupy Wall Street. Photographer Julia Reinhart and artist Molly Crabapple were among the people who got to check out the inside of police vans. (Jason Boog writes Crabapple's arrest got attention on Twitter from some famous writers.) John Knefel was among those arrested, which was sort of a trip down memory lane for him; his arrest at an Occupy event last year prompted a Boing Boing piece by Maggie Koerth-Baker on how to define journalists.

Knefel doesn't work for a major media outlet. But he's also not just some random bystander. He's got a political podcast with new episodes three times a week. Do we only call someone a journalist if they have enough page views? Do they have to have a journalism degree? What's the line?

Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press estimates five journalists have been arrested since anniversary demonstrations began over the past weekend. Here's Stearn's Storify document about the arrests: (more...)

Protesters are gathering outside The New York Times building on Eighth Avenue this morning, apparently as part of the Occupy movement's May Day protests. The protests are being organized in concert with labor unions; the Times is involved in a protracted contract negotiation with the Newspaper Guild.

Times freelancer Natasha Lennard was arrested covering Occupy Wall Street last fall; after she spoke about the protests at a public event, a BigGovernment.com blogger accused her of being an Occupy supporter. Lennard said she was not aligned with the protests; the Times defended her reporting but said it didn't plan to use her again.

Lennard later said that she didn't want to be part of mainstream media because she has too many "problems with what does or does not get to be a fact — or what rises to the level of a fact they believe to be worth reporting."

Armin Rosen comments on Tuesday's protests:

BTW, #OWS has now protested the Metropolitan Opera, the Air and Space Museum and the NYT. There's something not quite...liberal about this.

— Armin Rosen (@therealarosen) May 1, 2012

Capital New York | The City Maven
Robert Stolarik was freelancing for The New York Times, trying to photograph arrests at World Financial Center on Monday, but officers kept pushing him back and blocking his shots. At one point during the confrontation, captured on video (3:05), an officer repeatedly bobs in front of Stolarik. "Are you really doing that right now?" Stolarik asks, then records the officer denying that he blocked his shots. Stolarik told The Village Voice that his press credential was visible; it's visible in the video. In Los Angeles, The City Maven reports that a new video contradicts a Los Angeles police officer's contention that a City News Service reporter arrested two weeks ago was drunk and didn't identify himself. The police department is investigating. "As to why the police department’s original account appears to differ from the video," writes Alice M. Walton, LAPD Cmdr. Andrew Smith "said there was a major miscommunication between the arresting officers and Media Relations." Update: Joe Pompeo reports that a Times lawyer has complained to the deputy commissioner, who is looking into that incident and another one. (more...)

The New York Times
Adbusters magazine editor Kalle Lasn created the hashtag #occupywallstreet on July 13 to "tap simmering frustration on the American political left." He intended to create a message that would capture and define a moment and a movement.

“There’s a number of ways to wage a meme war,” Mr. Lasn, whose name is pronounced KAL-luh LAS-en, said in an interview. … “If you’re able to come up with a very sexy sounding hash tag like we did for Occupy Wall Street, and you come up with a very magical looking poster that seems to have something very profound about it, these devices push these memes, these meta memes, into the public imagination in a very powerful way,” he said. … “This is what Adbusters has done for the past 20 years, to come up with these memes and to propagate them,” he said. “That’s what it’s all about: may the best memes win.”

Here's what you may have missed Thanksgiving week:

• Editor & Publisher announced their EPPY award finalists; winners will be announced Wednesday. (E&P)
• NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly sent a letter to officers reminding them that journalists must be allowed to do their jobs; the note follows reports of police interference during Occupy Wall Street coverage. (AP)
• Egyptian-American journalist Mona Eltahawy was detained and assaulted for 12 hours in Cairo. Documentarian Jehane Noujaim was also detained. The Committee to Protect Journalists says at least 17 journalists were assaulted in Egypt in the last 10 days. (CNN, The New York Times, CPJ)
• New York Times newsman Tom Wicker died Friday. Wicker was known, among other things, for his front-page coverage of JFK's assassination. He was remembered as "solid" and "hot-tempered." Washington Post senior vice president Christopher Ma also died last week, as did copy editor Charles Stough. (New York Times, Washington Post, Charles Apple)
• "There really is nothing sacred in media circles right now," journalism professor Dan Reimold told the AP about the Poynter-Romenesko flap. Josh Benton concluded that Romenesko readers exploded because "the totality of the user experience brings in issues of design, of code, of fair use, of promotion — it’s a lot more complicated than merely whether a box gets checked on a feature checklist." (Yahoo, Nieman Journalism Lab)
• AAJA's Minnesota chapter met with WCCO about its reporting on a Chinatown market that it said sold dogs instead of duck. "We applaud WCCO for responding to AAJA's concerns and look forward to strengthening a trusted, long term partnership between our two organizations," AAJA said in a statement released last week. (Mediabistro, AAJA)
• HuffPost asked journalists what they're thankful for. Founder Arianna Huffington said she was thankful “the supercommittee isn't responsible for determining our editorial budget." Chuck Todd said, “I'm thankful the Republican candidates have decided NOT to debate this weekend. I just hope that when I'm sitting around my Turkey Day table, I don't cut someone off and tell my wife she has 30 seconds to respond and pass the cranberry sauce." (The Huffington Post)

Groundswell
Josh Stearns describes how he has tracked and, equally important, verified reports of journalists being arrested at Occupy protests around the country. "I decided early on that I wasn’t going to quibble about who is a journalist, and who isn’t. My goal was to account for anyone who was clearly committing acts of journalism when they were arrested. However, I also recognize that to hold police and city officials accountable for these arrests, those being arrested had to identify as journalists publicly – either with some form of credentials or verbally," Stearns writes. In one case, he removed a journalist from his list after learning that the person was participating in the protests, not covering them. He tells me by email that he's been criticized for including student journalists on his list, "but I reject the notion that student journalists are not full journalists, or somehow doesn't deserve First Amendment protections." He also hasn't heard from any individual bloggers (people unaffiliated with an organization's site) to tell him about being arrested or mistreated. (more...)

New overnight and updates on developing stories:

• Roger Ailes was "livid" that Sarah Palin announced her decision not to run for president on talk radio, "robbing Fox News of an exclusive and a possible ratings bonanza," reports Gabriel Sherman. (New York magazine)
• How many questions will each candidate get during tonight's GOP debate? Networks usually keep count backstage, though "a network might naturally want to spend more time with a front-runner." (AP)
• New York journalists have joined together to complain about the city's treatment of media at the Occupy Wall Street protests. A dozen news organizations, including the AP and The New York Times, sent a letter to the chief NYPD spokesman that said, "The police actions of last week have been more hostile to the press than any other event in recent memory." The New York Press Club also created a coalition to monitor the NYPD's media relations. "Covering New York can be a contact sport," writes Michael Powell. (AP/Observer/New York Times)
• In testimony Monday before the British Parliament, actor Hugh Grant accused The Mail on Sunday of engaging in phone hacking to break news about him. The Mail reveals its source of those stories and calls Grant's accusations "mendacious smears driven by his hatred of the media." (The Independent/Daily Mail)
• Media give thanks for turkey headlines (Politico)