Disinformation, Dissent and Don Lemon
Protesters and the press both need the First Amendment — and they both need to keep showing up
With the news that the U.S. government arrested three protesters on Thursday in connection with the anti-ICE protest at the Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, the propaganda-pushing White House doctored a photo showing one of those arrested — civil-rights attorney Nekima Levy Armstrong — crying in handcuffs.
It never happened. That photo is altered, twisting her face and darkening her skin. And the administration isn’t even trying to hide it. “The memes will continue,” said the White House deputy communications director.
Sharing doctored images under a White House account with millions of followers is how the new propaganda spreads — and by the time the fact checking begins and the disinformation is exposed, the damage has already been done. The right-wing-influencer machine doesn’t care one bit about facts and only revels in state-run media.
The Trump administration will do anything it can to discredit and racialize protest. Trump himself has made it part of his predictable pattern, calling protesters “agitators and insurrectionists” earlier this week on his personal propaganda channel, Truth Social, and proclaiming, “No person acts the way they act. They are highly trained to scream, rant, and rave, like lunatics, in a certain manner, just like they are doing.”
Quick threats
As with all things under Trump 2.0, the speed of the news since the Sunday protests has been overwhelming. But here is what we can gather: By Monday — Martin Luther King Day — the Trump Department of Justice was hell-bent on pressing charges against protesters. The DoJ was especially intent on charging former CNN host turned independent journalist Don Lemon for (gasp) covering the event, suggesting he was part of some “criminal conspiracy.” (CNN fired Lemon in 2023 after he made a series of misogynist remarks both in the workplace and on air.)
“Don Lemon himself has come out and said he knew exactly what was going to happen inside that facility,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon told Trump propagandist Benny Johnson on “The Benny Show.” “He went into the facility, and then he began — quote, unquote — ‘committing journalism,’ as if that’s sort of a shield from being a part, an embedded part, of a criminal conspiracy. It isn’t.”
There is video of Lemon saying the following from inside the church: “We’re not part of the activists, but we’re here just reporting on them.”
Sounds like a journalist to me.
The National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) blasted the Trump administration for its straight-up attack on “press freedom and journalistic integrity.”
“Journalists have a fundamental responsibility to observe, document and inform the public of events as they unfold, and they do not require permission to do so,” reads part of the NABJ statement, which Free Press co-signed. “Attempts by government officials to single out and scrutinize members of the press for legal newsgathering and fair reporting raise serious concerns about the treatment of journalists and the conditions under which they are expected to work.”
And it’s crystal clear that Black journalists understand the moment and what’s at stake here.
“For Black journalists, these moments carry added weight. Journalists of color are often on the front lines covering immigration enforcement, racial justice, policing, and civil unrest,” NABJ President Errin Haines notes. “Any erosion of press protections in these contexts disproportionately endangers Black journalists and the communities we serve.”
This is about power
While the three protesters arrested are still facing charges, charges against Lemon were dropped. Politico notes that he was listed as one of eight defendants, but a magistrate judge nixed any charges against him.
The fact that Lemon wasn’t charged has already fired up the propagandists like Johnson, who claimed, per CNN’s Reliable Sources, that “DOJ sources” are seeking “multiple alternative legal paths are already in motion” against Lemon.
This is what intimidation of the press looks like, and the only way to combat it is to keep doing journalism.
“I stand proud, and I stand tall,” he said on his Thursday night YouTube show, according to CNN. “This is not a victory lap for me because it’s not over. They’re going to try again, and they’re going to try again. And guess what? Here I am. Keep trying. That’s not gonna stop me from being a journalist. You’re not gonna diminish my voice.”
When I hear words like these, my sense of hopelessness diminishes. This is the kind of resolve we must all practice.This quote from Lemon hits hardest: “None of this is about justice. It’s about power.”
And aren’t journalists the ones who are supposed to speak that truth to power?
Protest as power
Defending journalists’ right to record and bear witness is essential. But journalists can’t forget that the First Amendment protects protesters, too. If we don’t safeguard everyone’s rights to speak out and dissent, then we’ll all lose. And we cannot forget why the protesters were there in the first place. They showed up at the church because the pastor there has a day job as an ICE field director, working for the same agency that is murdering people at protests and in detention, trampling the Fourth Amendment, detaining 5-year-old kids and acting like an American Gestapo.
Mauro Morales
“You cannot lead a congregation while directing an agency whose actions have cost lives and inflicted fear in our communities,” Levy Armstrong said Tuesday. “When officials protect armed agents, repeatedly refuse meaningful investigation into killings like Renee Good’s, and signal they may pursue peaceful protesters and journalists, that is not justice — it is intimidation.”
The message coming out of Minnesota is not subtle. It’s aimed at anyone who might decide to show up next time and press record.
We’ve been here before
Covering protests is never easy, and there are times when such actions are uncomfortable for the public to accept. Just as civil-rights protesters challenged the status quo back in the 1960s, immigrant-rights activists conducted actions in the 2010s, or when Black Lives Matter demonstrations happened across the country in 2020.
These are all newsworthy events that merit courageous coverage. A lot of my early days as a digital journalist were grounded in covering and publishing stories about protests. From Occupy Wall Street to the actions by immigration-rights activists, there were always voices that power wanted to keep quiet.
Journalists doing their jobs stand close enough to record those voices. If we don’t, we risk slipping into a world where all information is propaganda, and we can no longer challenge the power that wants to crush our freedoms.This is what intimidation looks like, this is what the Trump regime wants and the only way to combat it is to keep showing up, keep writing, keep recording, keep interviewing, keep asking the tough questions they don’t want you to ask.
Teamwork
I want to congratulate my colleague Ruth Livier and the rest of the Free Press team for producing our latest report — COMPLICIT: Corporate Media’s Capitulation to Trump’s Attacks on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion — about how so many major U.S. media companies are backing off their DEI efforts.
“Diversity. Equity. Inclusion. These words are not just an acronym (“DEI”). They are principles that form the bedrocks of healthy democracies,” the report’s intro reads. “From ancient Greece to today, a functioning government has required representation and free expression from all of society’s voices. Today those principles are under threat from every corner of the Trump administration in a dangerous attempt to erase history, control the narrative and undermine opportunity for people of color and other targeted communities.”
You can read the full report here.
Or see the release we created in Spanish. It appears after the English version.
About the author
Julio Ricardo Varela is the senior producer and strategist at Free Press. He is also a working journalist, columnist and nonprofit-media leader. He is a massive Red Sox, Knicks and Arsenal fan (what a combo). Follow him on Bluesky.
