The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press has called on Minnesota officials to stop the series of protest coverage-related attacks on credentialed journalists. 

In a June 2 letter to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and head of the Minnesota Department of Corrections, the committee, whose members include virtually all the major news outlets and their association's, said police have "arrested, detained, threatened and physically assaulted journalists with rubber bullets, pepper spray, tear gas, batons, and fists." 

Related: Committee to Protect Journalists Calls for Media Safety 

It said in all cases there were "strong indications" that the police knew they were members of the press.  

"The right of the press to document police activity is foundational to our democracy and has long been recognized and protected by the courts," they wrote. 

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz apologized for the arrest of a CNN news crew. The committee acknowledged the apology and said interactions between police and journalists had improved, but said even one arrest or assault when law enforcement know it is a journalist is a profound violation of the First Amendment. 

And there was more than one. The committee cited a TV reporter pepper sprayed and a freelance journalist who lost an eye to a rubber bullet while "clearly in the act of photographing police," as well as the that on-camera arrest of CNN's Omar Jimenez, and crew, plus more that a dozen other incidents it said it has documented. 

The committee asked the governor to instruct officers that the news media are exempt from curfews and sought other assurances to: 

• "Instruct your officers and staff that the arrest or physical attack of a journalist who is compliant with reasonable police orders is a clearly established First Amendment violation; 

• "Take swift action to discipline any officer who is found to have arrested or assaulted a journalist engaged in newsgathering; 

• "Inform your officers that they themselves could be subject to legal liability for violating these rights; 

• "Ensure that crowd control tactics are appropriate and proportional, and are designed to prevent collateral harm to journalists covering the protests; 

• "Continue to exempt members of the news media from mobility restrictions, including, and especially, curfews; and 

• "Release all information about arrests of or physical interactions with the press to the public to allow it to evaluate the legitimacy of police conduct." 

President Donald Trump has long attacked journalists as fake or politically motivated or dangerous enemies of the people, leading to his being branded, as a presidential candidate, by the Committee to Protect Journalists as a threat to press freedom "unknown in modern history."

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (D) publicly apologized to CNN for the arrest of its news crew while covering an arrest stemming from the destructive protesting and looting Thursday night in Minneapolis. 

Related: CNN Crew Arrested

He had already apologized personally to CNN president Jeff Zucker. 

That came during a news conference during which he told the journalists he was "deeply apologetic." 

He said he didn't care why they had been arrested, it was unacceptable.  

Walz said the police could not take a heavy hand with the media and that, even when clearing an area, they must make sure they create a safe spot for journalists to tell the story.  

Related: PEN America Says CNN Arrest Was Dystopian

He made it clear that the reason for that space went beyond protecting journalists, though he said that was a priority. He said protecting those journalists ability to cover the story was "not because it was a nice thing, but because it is a key to how we fix it." 

That is because when people see reporters being arrested, they assume something is about to happen that the police don't want to be seen.  

Related: Twitter Tags POTUS Tweet About Shooting Looters

Walz also said President Trump's tweet--that he had advised Walz that "when the looting starts, the shooting starts"--was "not helpful." 

Chris Snowbeck, president of the Minnesota chapter of the
Society of Professional Journalists, suggested providing such space was critical. “Police, State Patrol and other law enforcement officers should be well aware of the importance of the media whose job it is to document and report on breaking news for the benefit of the general public," Snowbeck said of the arrests. "We implore the responding parties to alert their officers on the rights of the press and the necessity of their presence as they continue to report on the current unrest.”

CBS News tweeted its support for CNN Friday:

[embed]https://twitter.com/CBSNewsPress/status/1266387160132960258[/embed]

“It’s difficult to imagine what police needed as ‘confirmation that these individuals were members of the media’ beyond Omar Jimenez showing his press badge while he spoke into a CNN camera surrounded by his producer and crew,” said Committee to Protect Journalists Program Director Carlos Martinez de la Serna. “Journalists have a responsibility to report on matters of public interest, such as protests, and should be able to freely cover these events without fear of retaliation from authorities. These arrests ring of intimidation and are simply outrageous.”