Reporter assaulted at city council meeting in Maine

Maine reporter Jon Fetherston was assaulted by a member of the public while questioning a Lewiston City Council member at a public meeting on Jan. 5, 2026, the outlet reported.

Fetherston, a journalist for the Maine Wire, a digital media outlet and project of the nonprofit think tank Maine Policy Institute, told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker that he attended the meeting to question Councilor Iman Osman. Osman faces gun charges and scrutiny over whether he lives in the ward he was elected to represent. He has since stepped down.

Before the meeting, where Osman was to be sworn in, Fetherston said he approached the councilor and asked, “Are you really going to do this?”

A woman, who Fetherston said is a community activist, then came up behind Fetherston, shoving him against the desk and telling him not to speak to the politician.

“I wasn’t physically hurt, but I was kind of shocked and angry that had happened,” Fetherston told the Tracker.

Police asked Fetherston if he wanted to press charges, but he declined.

“I was there to do my job. I wasn’t there to become part of the story,” he said. “I just thought it was best to do my job and let it go.”

Later, the woman again disrupted the City Council meeting, prompting the mayor to ask her to sit down and be quiet, Fetherston said. Police subsequently escorted her out of City Hall, an encounter partially captured in a video Fetherston posted on the social platform X.

Fetherston said the woman tried to approach him again in the hallway but was stopped by officers.

In a written statement posted on social media, Maine Wire Editor-in-Chief Steve Robinson condemned the assault and called on Maine officials to protect journalists doing their job.

“It wasn’t just Mr. Fetherston, city reporter for the award-winning Maine Wire, who was assaulted tonight,” he wrote. “Journalism itself was assaulted. The First Amendment was assaulted.”

Update: This article was revised to include comments by Jon Fetherston.