Incident details
- Date of incident
- April 28, 2024
- Location
- Los Angeles, California
- Case number
- 25STCV08969
- Case status
- Ongoing
- Type of case
- Civil
- Assailant
- Private individual
- Was the journalist targeted?
- Yes
Assault
Pro-Palestinian students and activists hold Palestinian flags at the University of California, Los Angeles, on April 28, 2024. Individuals at a counterprotest that day attacked student journalist Catherine Hamilton while she covered the demonstrations.
Student journalist Catherine Hamilton was covering a pro-Palestinian encampment at the University of California, Los Angeles, on April 28, 2024, when she was pushed, blocked from reporting and struck with the end of a flagpole by individuals at a counterprotest.
Protesters erected the encampment several days earlier, calling for a cease-fire in the Israel-Gaza war and urging the University of California system to divest from companies tied to weapons manufacturers supplying the Israeli military, according to UCLA’s student newspaper, the Daily Bruin.
Hamilton, then a third-year undergraduate student and editor of the Bruin, was covering a large counterprotest near the encampment when she said the violence occurred.
“I was in between them, recording what they were saying, taking pictures and trying to get a better picture of who was really instigating violence,” Hamilton told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker. Speaking of individuals at the counterprotest, she added, “They pushed me around, they tried to hit my phone out of my hand.”
Hamilton was then hit with the end of a flagpole, all while UCLA’s private security looked on.
“Private security was telling me: ‘Well, you’re making the decision to be there, you’re putting yourself at risk, there’s nothing we can do.’”
The previous night, one person at the counterprotest had taken a picture of her press badge displaying her full name, which added to the wariness that she said she felt while reporting on the encampment and engaging with counterprotesters.
“They flaunted the fact that they knew my name,” she said of those at the counterprotest.
Hamilton is one of several plaintiffs in a March 2025 lawsuit filed against UCLA, the California Highway Patrol and the Los Angeles Police Department for how they handled the violence on campus.
She later posted about her experience on the social platform X: “My name is Catherine Hamilton, and I am not afraid to continue being a student journalist.”
On other nights during the ongoing protests, Hamilton was surrounded by nearly a dozen people and struck by a person at the counterprotest, denied access to a campus media relations hall designated for reporter safety, and taken to the hospital after reporting difficulty breathing and standing.
The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker catalogs press freedom violations in the United States. Email tips to [email protected].
