Press advocates condemn Oakland Police Department’s press policy

FAC, the Pacific Media Workers NewsGuild-CWA Local 39521 and the Society of Professional Journalists of Northern California today condemned the Oakland Police Department’s exclusion of journalists from a news conference and urged the city to end a policy that requires press to have a police department-issued press pass to attend news conferences. “This policy and OPD’s actions today interfere with the ability of the press to keep the public informed, threaten press independence and hurt the community’s ability to get news from a diverse range of sources. It is also unnecessary and violates the First Amendment. It must end immediately.”