From WNYKRC in New York, this is NPR's On the Media.

I'm Bob Garfield.

And I'm Brooke Gladstone.

As the Republican National Convention rolled out its just-plain folks-themed event,

emphasizing service and patriotism in the Excell Energy Center,

protests metastasized into riots in the streets of St. Paul,

capped as the RNC drew to a close on Thursday,

with tear gas, percussion grenades, and 400 people arrested.

Fuck, go!

How are you going to die by firing squad?

We're on the group!

I'm trying to leave peacefully!

According to the St. Paul Pioneer Press, Monday kicked off a bad week, with nearly 300 arrested, among them an associated press photographer, and Amy Goodman, host of the TV and radio program Democracy Now and her crew, all of whom clearly displayed press passes.

President Journalists now! You're finally at my constitutional right. and her crew, all of whom clearly displayed press passes. But reporters saw them self out, from the convention floor.

Sir, I want to talk to you.

But reporters saw themselves swept up or even targeted as early as Saturday

when the independent video group eyewitness was detained preemptively in the House that served as its base of operations.

The group was there to document police clashes with protesters.

In 2004 at the RNC in New York, eyewitness provided crucial evidence of police misconduct and perjury that caused charges to be dropped against

hundreds of protesters.

Altogether, as of this writing, a couple dozen reporters have been arrested in St. Paul,

a few from the Associated Press and some newspapers, but mainly, it seems, from small and

...