Incident Details
- Date of Incident
- August 12, 2018
- Location
- Charlottesville, Virginia
- Targets
- Gary Cooper (WTVD)
- Assailant
- Private individual
- Was the journalist targeted?
- Yes
Assault
- Equipment Broken
- Actor
- Private individual
Equipment Damage
Gary Cooper, a journalist with North Carolina TV station WTVD, was filming a crowd of demonstrators on Aug. 12, 2018, in Charlottesville, Virginia, when some of the demonstrators cut his camera's audio cable.
Cooper and journalist DeJuan Hoggard were in Charlottesville to cover anti-fascist demonstrations marking the one-year anniversary of the murder of Heather Heyer, who was killed by a white nationalist at the "Unite the Right" rally in 2017.
A group of demonstrators, apparently unhappy with being filmed, got into an altercation with Cooper and Hoggard, during which the demonstrators cut the audio cable connecting Cooper's external microphone to his camera.
Hoggard later tweeted a photo of Cooper holding the broken camera, and Cooper tweeted that he had a spare cable. Hoggard also tweeted a video of an altercation that he had with demonstrators before the cable was cut.
Protestors didn’t want to be filmed and cut my photographer’s audio cable cord. pic.twitter.com/GBLryCjWZs
— DeJuan Hoggard (@DeJuanABC11) August 12, 2018
Thankfully, I have a spare cable.
— Gary Cooper (@GaryCooperWTVD) August 12, 2018
...And a GoPro mounted to the rig that was on the whole time.
:-) https://t.co/sRVcNiUdfD
This is the moment protestors and members of Antifa tried to stop us from filming and then cut our audio cable. pic.twitter.com/yJc4Z77nvS
— DeJuan Hoggard (@DeJuanABC11) August 12, 2018
“Get that out of my face,” one protester says in the video, before blocking the camera with a sign.
The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker catalogues press freedom violations in the United States. Email tips to [email protected].
