There are hundreds to thousands of abuses of law enforcement power like this per year where simple warrant serving is executed by a swat team in order to justify the budget of the swat team.
The thing about a letter is, you've got 30-90 minutes while you write it to reconsider what you're writing. And if there's a 50p + an envelope + paper cost to that, maybe you think more carefully about what you're trying to say.
With a 500 character limit and a "quick fire, gotta reply fast" push, most interactions are utter crap.
Email (at least to me) is the sort-of-okay middle ground.
by many measures we all are in this day and age. does it require having successfully sold a story to an established news organization?
I don't agree with raiding a journalist at all (in general), but more importantly I feel the sledge hammer + guns approach is clearly intended to be intimidating and has no place in this kind of warrant. In essence I have more of a problem with the egregious use of weapons and violence on the part of police enforcing a warrant for a non-violent, and non-weapon related crime than I do specifically the attack on journalism.
Obviously the attack on journalism is bad, but in general the intimidation by police is a more widespread problem. Basically the problem for real journalism is the fact that a warrant was issued on a journalist in the first place (think pentagon papers as example of truth to power).
Freelancing is nothing really new. It may be more common.
- I said so in the tax office
- I earn money with it
I am quite sure it is not that much different for journalists. As long as you said so at some offical place and earn money with it?
Oh wait, that's militias
