title:  Trump Is Charging Journalists With Felonies For Covering His Inauguration Protests
text: In a play right out of Vladimir Putin s Rules for Dictators, Donald Trump is in the process of locking up journalists who don t paint a rosy picture of the Trump administration and his popularity, or lack thereof.So far, six journalists (First Amendment be damned) have been arrested for covering last Saturday s protests that followed Donald Trump s inauguration. If convicted, each of the six could face up to 10 years in prison and a $25,000 fine.A documentary producer, a photojournalist, a live-streamer and a freelance reporter were each charged with the most serious level of offense under Washington DC s law against rioting, after being caught up in the police action against demonstrators.The Guardian learned of their arrests after reporting on Monday that the journalists Evan Engel of Vocativ and Alex Rubinstein of RT America had also been arrested and charged with felonies while covering the same unrest on Friday morning.Source: The GuardianClearly, this is a direct violation of the First Amendment. Even if they weren t journalists, it s still legal to protest in this country, but journalists should be assigned even more protection. All they were doing were their jobs. They were recording the protest, not instigating. These charges are clearly inappropriate, and we are concerned that they could send a chilling message to journalists covering future protests,  said Carlos Laur a, the CPJ s senior Americas program coordinator.  We call on authorities in Washington to drop these charges immediately. Trump s apparent role model, Vladimir Putin, has a long and abusive history with journalists in his own country. About a year ago, when Republicans still hated Russia, the conservative blog, The Daily Caller, talked about how in Russia, not only are journalists censored, they far too often end up dead.A 2009 investigation by the International Federation of Journalists reported 96 killings of journalists between 1991 and 2009, by far the highest number among the 20 richest countries in the world.We aren t saying Trump is there. We desperately hope he never goes that far, but his disdain for journalism is public knowledge and his attempts at censorship become more blatant every day. Arresting journalists for simply doing their job is an unacceptable precedent. Please let everyone know.Featured image via Scott Olson/Getty Images.