Cameras Rolled As Conservatives Were Targeted – And Nobody Stopped It

What happened in Minneapolis should disturb anyone who still believes journalism is a civic vocation rather than a predatory trade. Two conservative men were hunted by angry mobs in public spaces. They were chased, beaten, humiliated, and injured. All of this occurred in the presence of reporters and camera crews who did not merely observe events from a distance but actively accompanied the mobs as they pursued their targets. These journalists followed the violence into enclosed spaces, filmed the attacks as they unfolded, and then continued to trail the mobs as they stalked their victims afterward. At no point did they summon help. At no point did they intervene. At no point did they attempt even the minimal act of calling police.

Many readers will instinctively recoil at the suggestion that journalists should face criminal prosecution for inaction. Journalism, after all, is usually associated with exposure, not participation. But instinct is not argument. Minnesota law is unusually clear on this point, and moral clarity follows close behind. When reporters knowingly observe violent crime and do nothing, not even the bare minimum required by statute, they are no longer neutral chroniclers. They are bystanders in violation of law, and in these cases, accomplices to moral atrocity.

Begin with the law. Minnesota Statutes section 604A.01 is commonly referred to as the state’s Good Samaritan law. The phrase is misleading. In most states, Good Samaritan statutes merely protect volunteers from liability when they attempt to help. Minnesota goes further. It imposes an affirmative duty to assist. Subdivision 1 provides that a person at the scene of an emergency who knows that another person is exposed to or has suffered grave physical harm must, to the extent that the person can do so without danger or peril to self or others, give reasonable assistance to the exposed person. Reasonable assistance includes obtaining or attempting to obtain aid from law enforcement or medical personnel.

This is not vague. It does not require heroism. It does not require physical intervention. It requires only reasonable assistance, and the statute explicitly names calling police or medical services as sufficient. Failure to comply is a petty misdemeanor.

Now consider the facts as presented. In the first incident, a conservative man was chased by an angry mob into a parking garage. He was bleeding profusely from the head. He was repeatedly attacked as he attempted to reach his vehicle. At least a dozen reporters carrying cameras followed the mob into the garage and filmed the assault. The police were not present. The man was in obvious danger. No reasonable person could deny that he had suffered grave physical harm and was exposed to further harm. The reporters were not themselves under attack. They were close enough to record the violence in detail. Under Minnesota law, they had a duty, minimal and explicit, to call for help. They did not.

In the second incident, Jake Lang was surrounded by a mob in freezing temperatures. He was doused with water. He attempted to escape by climbing toward a window. He was pulled down and beaten. Reporters again filmed the attack. When Lang was finally dragged out of the crowd and released, not to safety but to further pursuit, the reporters followed the mob as it stalked him and attacked him again. Once more, no calls to police. No attempt to summon aid. No effort to discharge even the most elementary legal obligation.

The videos themselves remove any remaining ambiguity. They clearly show reporters present at the scene of emergencies, filming while violent assaults unfolded and while victims were bleeding, pursued, and in obvious danger. The reporters knew, or could not plausibly have failed to know, that the victims had suffered grave physical harm. They could have obtained aid without danger to themselves. They did not. That is a violation of Minnesota law.

Some will object that journalists are different. They will say that the press must be free to observe without interference, that calling police might compromise neutrality, that reporters are not deputized guardians of public safety. But none of this appears in the statute. The law does not carve out an exemption for credentialed observers. A camera does not nullify a duty imposed on every other citizen. Neutrality is not a license to ignore a bleeding man on the concrete.

Others will argue that calling police might escalate the situation or endanger the reporters. Again, the statute already accounts for this concern. The duty exists only to the extent assistance can be rendered without danger or peril to self or others. Filming at close range inside a parking garage while a man is beaten is already a risky act. If it was safe enough to record, it was safe enough to dial 911.

There is also a deeper moral issue that the law merely gestures toward. Journalism is not morally inert. To watch suffering and do nothing is already a choice. To profit from it, to broadcast it, to treat another man’s terror as content, is worse. Even The New York Times acknowledges this point in its own ethics rules, which state that journalists should render assistance in emergencies when possible and should not stand aside when lives are at risk merely to observe. The reporters here did exactly what their profession’s most prestigious institution says they must not do. They did not simply fail to help. They extracted value from the violence. The incentive structure was obvious. The longer the chase, the more dramatic the footage. The closer the mob came to its target, the better the story. In that sense, inaction was not accidental. It was instrumental.

This is why civil liability should also be on the table. Minnesota tort law recognizes claims for negligence where a legal duty exists and is breached, causing harm. Here, the statutory duty to assist supplies the duty. The breach is the failure to summon aid. The harm is continued assault and injury that could reasonably have been mitigated by timely police intervention. Media outlets that sent reporters into these situations and then aired the footage should not be insulated from responsibility simply because the harm was inflicted by others.

Some will worry about a chilling effect. They will warn that prosecuting reporters will discourage coverage of protests and unrest. But the chilling effect cuts the other way as well. When mobs learn that violence will be documented but not interrupted, when they see journalists function as embedded observers rather than deterrents, the incentive for brutality increases. The presence of cameras did not restrain the attackers. It emboldened them.

Minnesota’s duty to assist statute exists precisely to prevent this kind of moral abdication. It reflects a judgment that in a decent society, witnessing grave harm creates obligation. You may not be able to stop the blow. You may not be able to shield the victim. But you must at least call for help. That is the floor, not the ceiling, of civic responsibility.

Journalism has confronted this moral boundary before, and the profession’s own history is instructive. In 1993, Kevin Carter photographed a starving child collapsed on the ground during the Sudan famine, with a vulture lingering nearby. The image won a Pulitzer Prize. Carter did not carry the child to a relief station. The photograph became iconic, and Carter later took his own life. The image endures as a warning about what happens when observation displaces humanity. In 2017, after the London Bridge terror attack, Umar Abbasi filmed a gravely injured woman lying on the pavement moments after the assault. He refused to administer aid and instead recorded her final moments. The footage provoked widespread condemnation precisely because it revealed the moral emptiness of just filming. By contrast, Dan Eldon, while documenting famine and war in Somalia, repeatedly stopped filming to render aid to victims. He treated human life as prior to footage. He was later killed in Mogadishu and is remembered as a model of human-first journalism.

Across major professional bodies and news organizations, the lesson has been absorbed. The Society of Professional Journalists, the Radio Television Digital News Association, and the ethics codes of major newsrooms, including CNN, The New York Times, and the Associated Press, converge on a common view. Calling police is never unethical. Rendering reasonable aid is encouraged. Standing aside to film preventable violence is increasingly regarded as indefensible. The consensus today is clear. The reporters in Minneapolis did not merely violate Minnesota law. They fell below the ethical standards their own profession now openly claims to uphold.

What made these episodes so sickening was not only the violence of the mobs but the cold professionalism with which it was recorded. I watched portions of these attacks live through streamers covering the events. Listening to the reporters as the violence unfolded, it was clear that many, and likely most, believed the attacks were justified because the victims were ICE supporters. The reporters saw blood. They saw panic. They saw men being hunted. They did nothing, not out of confusion or fear, but out of ideological assent. They chose the role of spectator when the law required the role of citizen.

Prosecution would not be an attack on press freedom. It would be a defense of the most basic legal and moral norms. The statute is clear. The facts, as described, are stark. When journalism crosses the line from observation to complicity, the law is entitled to respond.

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