‘The scariest situation’: Reporters and outlets targeted by protesters and police in Floyd protests nationwide

Early on Friday morning, CNN’s Omar Jimenez and his crew were arrested while he was reporting live on-air from Minnesota. The crew was released shortly after, and Jimenez was back on the air about 90 minutes after the arrests, which Democratic Gov. Tim Walz called “totally unacceptable.”

“They led us out of the van we were inside the van handcuffed the whole time. We were sat down. Waited for a bit more. From there, that was when they eventually came back with our belonging, that is, they had confiscated over the course of this. They unclipped our handcuffs, and then that is when we were led out. Again, to answer your question, there was no sort of, ‘Sorry, this is a big misunderstanding,'” Jimenez said on-air after the arrest.

The arrests foreshadowed a difficult night for journalists as they faced harassment Friday night during the latest night of protests.

In Louisville, WAVE 3 reporter Kaitlin Rust was moving toward a line of police officers when an officer aimed their gun and began spraying Rust and her camera crew with rubber bullets.

In addition to protesting the death of Floyd, an unarmed black man who died in police custody on Monday, protesters also demanded justice in the shooting death of Breonna Taylor. Taylor, a 26-year-old EMT worker, was shot and killed in March after officers forced their way inside her apartment while executing a search warrant in a narcotics investigation.

Fox News’s Leland Vittert and his crew were harassed and chased while covering protests outside the White House while Briana Whitney of the Arizona-based CBS affiliate was assaulted while covering the protests in Phoenix.

Video showed a massive group of people chasing Vittert and his crew into the darkness of Lafayette Park across from the front of the White House, while Whitney was live on-air when a man rushed her, grabbed her, and screamed, “F— her right in the p–sy.”

“This was the scariest situation I’ve been in since I got chased out of Tahrir Square by a mob, and this was equally scary,” Vittert told Fox News, referring to his coverage for Fox News Channel of the 2011 Arab Spring and ousting of Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak.

Whitney, who was attacked while on-air, immediately apologized before, saying that she felt “violated,” adding that it was “terrifying” and “NOT OKAY.”

CNN’s studio in Atlanta was vandalized by protesters on Friday night as well.

Photos and videos circulated on social media show a large crowd near the sign and unintelligible graffiti spray-painted on the sign.

“The CNN letters still stand proud outside the building this morning, despite the damage, and will be repaired today,” CNN chief Jeff Zucker said in a memo on Saturday, according to Brian Stelter.

CNN’s Nick Valencia was reporting on-air from what appeared to be the ground floor of the CNN building when a protester threw a device that released gas and exploded.

The protests across the country began in reaction to the death of Floyd, who died after white Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin restrained him by placing his knee on his neck for nearly nine minutes on Monday.

Chauvin and three other officers involved in Floyd’s detainment were fired on Tuesday. Chauvin was taken into custody on Friday and charged with third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.