It’s been disturbing to watch journalists around the country arrested for simply doing their jobs covering Occupy protests. From New York to California, Occupy protesters have been making headlines and, unfortunately, so have the journalists covering the events. Studio SPJ hosted a discussion on this topic with Paul Fletcher, Virginia Pro SPJ President, and Mickey Osterreicher, counsel for the National Press Photographers Association.

Listen to the archived podcast.

Virginia Pro is one of the local SPJ chapters that issued a letter of objection to arrests in their area. Read more about what happened in Virginia and the pro chapter’s response. SPJ also issued a statement this month calling on city officials to drop charges against journalists covering the protests.

Our discussion during the podcast revealed the general public doesn’t always agree that journalists should be allowed to freely cover these protests. A greater level of education is needed. And that is one way journalists all over can get involved – write about what’s going on and get the word out there.

Other Occupy tidbits:

Josh Stearns, associate program director at Free Press, is maintaining a list of journalists arrested. Also check out his blog, Groundswell.

Read about Nashville Scene reporter Jonathan Meador’s arrest ordeal.

Back in September, the Health Resources and Services Administration removed the Public Use File of the National Practitioners Data Bank. The file was a resource for journalists and the public to gain information about medical practitioners, including doctors. Led by the Association of Health Care Journalists, a coalition of journalism organizations publicly objected to the removal. HRSA has restored the file to public view … BUT … there is a heavy caveat to the data being brought back. Users of the data set must agree not to repost or share the data on other websites, and cannot use it to identify an entity or individual (such as a doctor) by name.

We gathered some key players in this discussion together to talk about the far-reaching ramifications of public records with strings. Weighing in on this discussion are SPJ President John Ensslin, AHCJ President Charles Ornstein and Kansas City Star reporter Alan Bavley, who was threatened with a fine if his newspaper published a story that used confidential information from the data bank. The Kansas City Star chose to publish the information.

Listen to the Nov. 13 episode of Studio SPJ.

More resources on this topic:

SPJ: Public data bank file restored, but with major restrictions

SPJ: National Practitioner Data Bank restricted: How you can help

On the Media: The loss of a valuable journalistic tool

Association of Health Care Journalists and check out their timeline and resources on this subject