GOP Candidate's Attack On Reporter Shows Peril Of Asking Questions In Trump's America

On Wednesday evening, Montana Republican congressional candidate Greg Gianforte slammed Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs to the floor as Jacobs tried to ask his view on GOP health care legislation.

As Jacobs and a Fox News crew told it, it was a shocking assault on a reporter just one day before a special election to fill the states lone House seat.

But it was hardly an isolated occurrence. In the past three weeks, political reporters have described being arrested, pinned against a wall, slapped, and now body slammed all this in a nation where freedom of the press is enshrined in the Constitution.

Alaska Dispatch News reporter Nathaniel Herz told police earlier this month that Republican state Sen. David Wilson slapped him during an encounter over a recent story.

West Virginia reporter Dan Heyman was arrested on May 10 while trying to ask a question of Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, who later praised police for their handling of the situation.

And last week, CQ Roll Call reporter John M. Donnelly said he was pinned against a wall by security guards after trying to ask a Federal Communications Commission member a question in Washington.

The Gianforte incident stood out, in part, because of the galling absence of an apology from the candidate. His campaign tried to characterize Jacobs as the aggressor, and labeled him a liberal journalist. Even though Jacobs audio recording contradicts the campaigns version of events, the campaigns statement implies that the liberal reporter is perhaps deserving of violent retaliation for doing his job.

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