The arrest of Don Lemon should alarm anyone who cares about democracy, regardless of how they feel about Don Lemon himself.
Lemon is a polarising figure. He has critics across the political spectrum. President Trump’s hostility toward him is long-standing and public. None of that should matter. What matters is this: a journalist was arrested and charged by federal authorities for doing what journalists are supposed to do – observe, document, and report.
That is a line democracies are not meant to cross.
According to prosecutors, Lemon was not arrested for his opinions but for allegedly crossing from reporting into participation while covering a protest at a Minnesota church. Lemon denies this, stating he repeatedly identified himself as a journalist and was present solely to document events. Whether prosecutors ultimately succeed is almost beside the point. The damage is already done.
The message sent to journalists is unmistakable: you may report – but only at the pleasure of the state.
This is not about special treatment for the press. Journalists are not above the law. But democracies have long recognised that reporting on public events is not a crime, even when those events are chaotic, controversial, or politically inconvenient. The First Amendment exists precisely because governments have a habit – across history and continents – of redefining “law and order” when scrutiny becomes uncomfortable.
What makes this case especially troubling is context. President Trump has repeatedly described critical media as “the enemy of the people.” He has openly mused about using government power against journalists he dislikes. When an administration with that record brings federal criminal charges against a well-known critic for covering a protest, it is impossible – and irresponsible – to ignore the appearance of retaliation.
In liberal democracies, appearance matters. Justice must not only be done; it must be seen to be done. When prosecutors pursue journalists in politically charged cases, they shoulder a heavy burden to demonstrate that their actions are neutral, proportionate, and unavoidable. That burden has not been met here.
There is also a broader danger. If the state can argue that proximity equals participation, then any reporter covering protests, strikes, police actions, or civil unrest does so at legal risk. The chilling effect will not fall on celebrity journalists with lawyers and platforms. It will fall on freelancers, local reporters, student journalists – the very people who document power where it is least visible.
Australians should not view this as a distant American problem. Democracies learn from one another. Precedents travel. Governments everywhere watch how far others can go without consequence.
This is how press freedom erodes in practice: not with formal bans, but with selective prosecutions, ambiguous standards, and the quiet normalisation of intimidation. Each case is framed as exceptional. Each arrest is justified as lawful. And then, one day, journalists simply stop turning up.
You do not have to like Don Lemon to understand why his arrest matters. You only have to believe that governments should not decide who is allowed to report on them.
If journalism becomes something the state can criminalise at will, democracy does not collapse overnight. It thins. It hollows out. And by the time the public notices, the damage is already done.
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Like snowballs, starting off small then growing, rolling slowly then accelerating, the slide into autocracy in the States seems to be on a one-way trajectory; Curiouser and curiouser, the thrall Trump seems to have cast over the GOP, media, MAGA fans, big tech and oligarchs is one for the ages, albeit America flirted with fascism in the early 1930s, with Franklin Roosevelt eventually coming to the party to stem the movement before it was too late. So, perhaps, this is America’s lean towards fascism, reduxed. They’ve never done things by half measure. Yet to see where the pendulum finds its point of equilibration.
Thank you for your warning Michael. Journalism in Australia is under direct threat. The proof is in what is NOT being said, rather than what IS.
And Georgia Fort, an other journalist. While she doesn’t have Lemon’s profile, she still matters.
When you have a country as divided as the USA is, so called Democracy can never work. This is where Fascism comes into it own, control is the name of the game. Trump isn’t dividing the USA, he is just highlighting what has always been there. But he is certainly increasing the divide, not just within the USA, but also between the USA and the rest of the world.
Freedom of the press/media is what we had in Australia before the Murdoch Media Manipulation Monopoly was established to scorn Australian achievements and bully all democratic ”liberal” politicians.
NOTICE – Australian voters rejected this proposed fascist model from American sources when they ousted the COALition misgovernment in 2022 and then properly in 2025.
How does the Martin Niemoller “poem” go;
“First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
—Martin Niemöller Holocaust Encyclopaedia.
Time for all Australians to stand up and be counted ….. just as we did when the COALition took us into the unwanted US imperialist adventure in Vietnam ….. which they convincingly LOST!!