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On a hot and humid day in July, Madeline Fening and Lucas Griffith, journalists for the alt-weekly Cincinnati CityBeat, were covering a protest over the detention of an Egyptian immigrant when they were both arrested. Journalists are detained while covering demonstrations with remarkable regularity in the US: 318 of the 386 cases of journalist arrests documented by the US Press Freedom Tracker since 2017 occurred at protests. But what makes the cases of Fening, an investigative reporter, and Griffith, a photo intern, unusual is that, two months later, prosecutors in Kenton County, Kentucky, where the arrests were made, have not dropped the charges. Both trials are scheduled to start this week.

Michael Abate, a Louisville-based attorney who specializes in media law and whose firm serves as general counsel to the Kentucky Press Association, says the case has raised alarm bells throughout the region’s press community. “I can’t think of anything more chilling to First Amendment activity, or more designed to prevent coverage of high-profile, newsworthy events, than to criminally charge reporters for being present on the scene,” he said. Marty Schladen, a reporter for the nonprofit Ohio Capital Journal, said, “It’s very concerning whenever police arrest journalists who are only trying to do their jobs.” More than twenty press freedom and media organizations have signed a letter calling for the charges to be dropped. (Fening and Griffith did not respond to requests for comment, and Ashley Moor, CityBeat’s editor in chief, declined to comment.)

Only a handful of reporters have been prosecuted for crimes related to their journalism in recent years. Freelance reporter Jenni Monet was arrested in 2017 and charged with criminal trespass while covering protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline; she was later acquitted. Tim Burke, a sports reporter in Florida, is still facing charges of computer fraud and conspiracy for publishing unaired streams of Tucker Carlson on Fox News. “Trials of journalists arrested while gathering the news are very rare in the United States,” said Jenny Wohlfarth, a journalism professor at the University of Cincinnati, who had Griffith as a student. “It’s not just these two reporters’ fates that are at stake here—and that’s important enough—but also the fundamental, constitutional right of a free press.”

Fening and Griffith were arrested while documenting a protest march along a bridge connecting Cincinnati to the Kentucky town of Covington; the demonstration was over the ICE detention of Ayman Soliman, an Egyptian cleric who had worked as a journalist in his home country before fleeing in 2014 for the US, where he was later granted asylum. (“There is a cruel irony in what’s happening,” said Marium Uddin, a Dallas-based attorney involved in Soliman’s case.) Footage recorded by Nick Swartsell, a reporter with the Cincinnati NPR affiliate WVXU, shows Fening filming police as they try to move protesters off the roadway, when an officer swiftly walks up to her and puts her in handcuffs. “She’s press! She’s a reporter!” Swartsell is heard yelling, before being pushed back by another officer. (Swartsell declined to comment.) Both Fening and Griffith were originally charged with felony rioting, but the charges have since been downgraded to an array of misdemeanors, including failure to disperse, disorderly conduct, obstructing emergency responders, and obstructing a highway, each of which can lead to ninety days in prison and a $250 fine.

At a press conference on the day of the arrests, Covington police chief Brian Valenti alleged that Fening did not have press credentials or an ID on her when she was taken into custody. Later that month, Kenton County prosecutor Rob Sanders told the local station WLWT that he viewed the defendants’ status as reporters as irrelevant. “We’ll be evaluating it like we would any other civilian, no matter what their line of work or what profession they are engaged in. It doesn’t matter to us when we evaluate the evidence,” Sanders said. More recently, the chief prosecutor for the office now handling the case told CJR that they had offered to drop the charges if the reporters would say on the record that the police had probable cause to arrest them, but the reporters declined. (The Kentucky ACLU, which is representing both reporters in the case, said it could not comment on that claim.)

Reporters who have faced similar situations say that regardless of the outcome, the cases are creating a chilling legacy for press freedom. In 2020, Andrea Sahouri, then a reporter for the Des Moines Register, was arrested while covering a Black Lives Matter protest and charged with failing to disperse and “interference with official acts.” She was later acquitted. “It’s been years now, and this is still happening,” she said. “At what point does this become normalized? I think that’s where we’re heading.”

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Liam Scott is an award-winning journalist who covered press freedom and disinformation for Voice of America from 2021 to 2025. He has also reported for outlets including Foreign Policy, New Lines, and Coda Story, and he received his bachelor’s degree from Georgetown University, where he served as executive editor of the student newspaper The Hoya.