Omar Jimenez

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CNN tweeted the arrest:

Listen to Omar Jimenez tell his story in this podcast. Scroll down to see video excerpts of his oral history embedded in the transcript:

Transcript

(Music sting - *from Jimenez’ original composition “On the Road.” )

Tease: The only words I ever heard were, "Look, man, I don't know, I'm just following orders." And so that was the only communication I heard from any Minnesota state patrol officer outside of the words "you're under arrest."

Music

Omar Jimenez: I'm Omar Jimenez and I'm a national correspondent with CNN.

Music

Omar Jimenez: Let me just do a quick check to make sure it’s....

Lisa Cohen: Thank you. I appreciate that.

Omar Jimenez: Check, check, check. All right, two, three, four. Alright, I’m all yours.

Lisa Cohen: Thank you very much. Thanks for talking to me.

Omar Jimenez: Yeah, definitely. Thanks for having me. This is great.

Lisa Cohen: And so — you went to that other journalism school.

Omar Jimenez: Correct. Yeah, some say, some say the better journalism school. But, you know, we won't get into that. We won't get into that. Yeah, I went to Northwestern, did my undergrad there in Chicago, so I graduated in twenty fifteen and went on to work local in Baltimore and that got everything going.

Lisa Cohen: Is journalism in your blood, or is it something that you have grown up around? Or is this like a real departure for you?

Omar Jimenez: No, it's a real departure. I mean, everyone in my family; my mom, dad, uncles, aunts, all doctors in different practices and different forms. My dad is a neurosurgeon. My mom is a cardiologist, and she was a cardiovascular surgeon at some point. And so I think there's this expectation that I would go into medicine since I'm the oldest. So when I said I was going into journalism, I think they were in denial for a bit. Try... and say, he'll switch eventually. Give it time, give it time, give it time. And I just kept getting opportunity after opportunity, which only emboldened me more. And next thing I know, I was getting offered a local job in Baltimore out of school. And I think that was the first time they sort of said, “Wait, I actually don't think he's going to be a doctor.”

Lisa Cohen: And was covering protests something that you'd done a lot of before this past year?

Omar Jimenez: No, it wasn't something I had done a lot of. Really, it was May 2020 - being the major spark point - sort of set off an entire year of covering maybe more protests in 2020 than I had in my entire career prior to that year. So while I had a lot of good practice on the magnitude and the types of stories and the depth of these types of stories that are usually at the center of these protests, actually being out there and keeping your wits about you and keeping your head on a swivel, those are things that I finally in some ways was able to put into practice, versus having just read about it and spoken about it with others before 2020.

Lisa Cohen: Yeah. I would love for you to talk a little bit about, like, what are those skill sets that you have to acquire to do this particular kind of reporting to be out in the middle of a protest?

Omar Jimenez: Honestly, protests are probably among the most volatile and among those unpredictable types of stories that you can cover, and that's including hurricanes, wildfires, even mass shootings. And that's just because you have that human element where you, at the end of the day, you don't know what a singular person is going to do. And so you always have to prepare for all of those different scenarios.

A lot of it comes down to those same sort of survival instincts of, alright, let's be as safe as we can. Let's look for hazards. But also trying to remember that there's a deeper message at the main centerpiece of the movements that we're seeing, the marching, the fists in the air or whatever. And so a lot of that comes from being read in on the story that you're covering enough to the point where you can add some depth to not just we're seeing, hundreds kneeling in protests here, but you're able to compare that - Oh, well, this George Floyd case is reminiscent of what happened a few years ago in the Minneapolis area with Philando Castile and with Jamar Clark. And being able to pull out some of those and draw comparisons, I think has been really important and really critical, especially for someone like me trying to tie things together at a national level.

Lisa Cohen: So adding context.

Omar Jimenez: Context. Yeah. Why does it matter?

Lisa Cohen: And the night that you; when all of this happened, May 29th, was that the first night that you'd been covering this protest? Is this the first time you'd been out at three o'clock in the morning or whenever?

Omar Jimenez: Probably at that point; it was a Friday. That was probably the third night we had we'd been out there.

Lisa Cohen: And was it any different that night?

Omar Jimenez: That particular morning there was more fire there than I think I had seen any other morning. There was a structure that was completely engulfed in flames. And I don't think I had seen that just yet. Not even being touched by the fire department, not touched by anyone, just completely burning. And the roof collapsed in. And, you know, as a reporter, you're always looking for things to show as part of your live reports.

And I'm thinking, well, this is what we're going to be using for the next few hours because I don't see any firefighters here. And just this spectacle is such, such a vibrant image, as violent as it may be. And so my team and I were assigned to the morning shift. That's typically how we split things up here. So I cover sort of the first 12 hours of the day, another team covers the second 12 hours.

So we got to the scene. This was right outside the Minneapolis police third precinct there, that had sort of been the focal point of a lot of the protests up to that point. We're trying to find a spot to go live. It's myself, my producer, Bill Kirkos, and my photographer Leonel Mendez. As I mentioned, this is the third morning in a row we had sort of gotten up at this godforsaken hour, dark and early to show what was going on. A lot of it was talking about the destruction that we had seen prior to that and the destruction we were currently seeing in front of us that was not being stopped in any way because people out at that time were not protesters.

These were people with baseball bats and masks cheering at the fire that was going up. So there was there wasn't really anything unified I could talk about at that point. And like any other morning, we were doing our reports. And then that got us up until when we were about to go live in the six a.m. Eastern Time hour right before the report where everything changed.

And then as we were doing that we heard the sirens coming from the background, and we didn't know where they were coming from. And all of a sudden we realized everybody, law enforcement, fire department, everyone was swarming back into the area at once, even though for hours we had seen that there was absolutely no one at that particular part of Minneapolis. And so we called our producer saying, "hey, like, this is happening, come back to us live." And they did. And we did maybe like a ten minute long report, which is a lot of time live on air for a TV show and showing what was happening."

And again, I cannot emphasize enough, we thought that this was as good as it was going to get destruction wise, protest wise, law enforcement wise, because it all was sort of happening right in front of us, which doesn't usually happen in those early morning hours.

Lisa Cohen: Right, so you're like , we've got something here.

Omar Jimenez: Yeah, I was like from a citizen sense, it was tough to see. But from a reporting sense, we felt very fortunate that we actually had something physical and tangible to talk about on top of the conceptual of the week that had been.

Lisa Cohen: That's interesting, the distinction between the personal and professional.

Omar Jimenez: Yeah, yeah.

Lisa Cohen: So then what happened?

Omar Jimenez: So then it's right around 6:00 a.m. Eastern Time and my team and I are gearing up for our next report, as we have been doing through the previous hour. And at this point, the law enforcement had sort of come through and cleared the block. And so we had actually walked about, about a block away from where everyone else was, just to kind of stay out of people's way. And so police have secured this block; literally, state police had marched in and shoulder to shoulder stood around. And so we sort of, since we were outside of that, “All right. This is a great backdrop for us; we're out of the way, they're doing what they need to do in that perimeter. We're outside the perimeter. Let's post up here.” And so we started to do our live report, as we had done for the days leading up to that and as we done in the earlier morning hours there. And everything was normal for the first minute and a half, two minutes.

Next thing I know, I turn around, I see this woman run past us. Police are sprinting past us and they basically take this woman to the ground and arrest her, which we got live on TV. And I'm still in that mindset like, wow, I can't believe how much is happening live in these early morning hours that we can show. Well, while the camera's on her, I'm off camera, behind the camera, and I feel a few officers surrounding me from behind with one officer having their hand on my arm. Now, at this moment, nothing weird registered with me because I actually just assumed they wanted me to sort of stay put because it definitely was a grip on my arm.

So at that point, the Minnesota state patrol who had come and tackled this woman and arrested her all turned around and basically are surrounding my crew and I, as I'm continuing to report, live on air. And I think at that moment I started to realize, alright, something’s a little off here because I'm now trying to negotiate with them saying, “ So tell us where you want us to go. We'll get out of your way. We didn't mean to interfere with, with this arrest that you're clearly making. We saw you coming down the block. So that's why we moved over here.”

(start of video excerpt “You’re Under Arrest")

I kept sort of asking, all right, where do you want us to go? The grip sort of tightens on my arm a little bit. And so now I'm starting to think, OK, something is a little off. But I didn't think that things would escalate to the point that they did, because even while he has my, his hand on my arm and I'm continuing to report and negotiate, eventually the camera swings back to me and I'm like, all right, we're fine. I'm showing them my press ID. I'll just keep talking because we're live on air. And after having negotiated and asked all those questions and been met with complete silence, the first words I heard were, "you're under arrest." And that's when they started pulling my arms behind my back, live on television. I in my head, I had no idea what was actually happening. I couldn't imagine that this is how our live report was ending.

(end of video excerpt)

Lisa Cohen: And what's going through your mind?

Omar Jimenez: Honestly the fear, slash confusion of not knowing what was going to happen next, because now I'm away from my team. Now I'm away from the cameras, the live television cameras. Now I'm truly at their mercy as they sort of open up to let me into the perimeter and then close back up behind me. And I'm facing away, by the way, from my team. So at that moment, I, I truly just thought, am I going to are they going to beat me up? Are they going to yell at me? Every thought imaginable was going through my head about, how could this have happened?

Lisa Cohen: And were they saying anything, were they, were they giving you any kind of explanation or any information?

Omar Jimenez: Literally none. I mean, in that first walk over, there wasn't a word said.

Lisa Cohen: And did they seem threatening? Was there menacing or a sense of violence, impending violence, or was it very matter of fact?

Omar Jimenez: It was very matter of fact, almost borderline polite once they had me in cuffs, where they just sort of put me over here, didn't say anything, didn't do anything out of the ordinary. Outside of the obvious, of course, cuffing a reporter on national live television.

Lisa Cohen: And do you have any sense that they realized that you were on the air? I mean, I feel like you were saying “We're on the air,” right?

Omar Jimenez: I definitely was. And even if they heard it, I don't think it quite registered with them who we were on the air live with. They saw my CNN badge, which I'm sure they registered, and they heard me definitely say, "Hey, we're on live television," which I did as a courtesy to them to say like, “Hey, like everybody's watching.” And they still continued on with everything.

(start of video excerpt -
”One Foot in Front of the Other”)

Lisa Cohen: You are so calm, I mean, I I watched the video and, you're just "Officers. Officers." How, uh, were you calm inside your head? Were you…how did you do that?

Omar Jimenez: So it's a combination of things. It actually is, when you talk about being Black and growing up Black, you are taught to speak to law enforcement a certain kind of way. So I think, one, I was in that mindset: let's not make sudden movements. Let's just talk. And if I'm going to talk, I'm going to be polite. I'm going to be cordial. So that's one. Two, I just think because of the job, you sort of thrive in these situations where whether it's a wildfire or hurricane or even a protest, where you have to be able to focus on doing your job despite all these crazy things happening around you. So I think that was a second layer that came into it. And three, I think I was just trying to focus on putting one foot in front of the other, so to speak, trying to not do anything that would spook them. And I actually do think I was calm in that moment. That wasn't a facade. But I think those three things that I had been unconsciously trained in all sort of kicked in at once there.

Lisa Cohen: And I guess there's this other factor, which is that you're on the air, and there's this, you know, the sacrosanct-ness of being on the air where you're you know, you're supposed to be behaving a certain way.

Omar Jimenez: Yeah, there's definitely that too, where it was that, if there was a fourth layer is definitely that knowing that my bosses are watching,.

Lisa Cohen: (Laughs).

Omar Jimenez: My parents are watching. You know, you always act different when someone of authority is watching you.

(end of video excerpt )

And I think in that moment, I was definitely conscious not to curse because of that. I was conscious of the fact that I'm representing the story and also the network when this is happening.

Lisa Cohen: So first they take you away and then what happened?

Omar Jimenez: I didn't know this part until I saw the footage later, but my producer was then cuffed next. He was led away, and all that was left was my photographer, my photographer who was still rolling, valiantly rolling throughout all of this. He could have easily panicked, but stayed cool and kept rolling. And then our security guard that we had with us. My photographer is holding the microphone, and even though he didn't have any way to hear the show, he just started speaking and telling them what was happening, which the show smartly took live on air. And he said, "Look, guys, I think I'm about to get arrested with them."

And then he puts the camera down - I still don't know if it was on purpose or completely by accident - in a way that completely shows him getting cuffed, for the record, live on air with that camera sort of facing up from the ground. And then he's led away. And the next movement you see of the camera is a Minnesota patrol officer picking it up and sort of walking with it. You see it going back and forth on his boot as he moves across that Minneapolis pavement.

Lisa Cohen: So you were arrested first. You're the guy with the mic in your hand. The question is, you know, why did they come after you first? Is it because you're the one with the mic in your hand? Is it because you're the Black reporter as opposed to the white guy or the other people? Do you have any thoughts about any of this?

Omar Jimenez: I honestly don't know about why it was me first. Maybe it was because I was just the central person and me continuing to talk and report live on air maybe was seen as some sort of defiance. And they said, you know what, that's it. Take him in. What it also seemed like is, because there were no words spoken from some of the, from these patrol officers that it seemed someone was communicating with them through a headset because they truly all just moved at once. It was, all right, I'm being held. I'm continuing to report, everything is calm, everything is cool, and then “you're under arrest,” and everybody sort of moves in. It was like someone gave that order. So unclear why I was the first one to go or I was the first one that was, that was targeted there.

Lisa Cohen: So then what happened?

Omar Jimenez: So then actually, I was led from that block towards these police vans, and at this point I actually still hadn't seen my producer and photographer in cuffs.

So I'm now being led even further away toward a police van. I still had my IFB, as it's known but, my earpiece was still in, the earpiece I used to hear the anchors as they talk to me on air. So because I didn't have a microphone, I couldn't talk back. But the entire time I can hear what's happening in the show, how the anchors are reacting.

Lisa Cohen: (laughter)

Omar Jimenez: How other guests are talking about the show. And while I'm standing there is when finally my producer and photographer sort of come around the corner, also cuffed. And so now finally, we're all back together, along with our security officer.

Lisa Cohen: You must have had some kind of feeling at that point of, either, oh, now we're really in it cause we're all arrested or. Oh, my goodness, this is great. I'm not in here all by myself.

Omar Jimenez: Yeah, it was definitely the oh my goodness, I'm not by myself. Like, I'm sad you also got cuffed, but at the same time, thank God you got cuffed too, because now at least we're all in this together where, you're right. I was really nervous that I was going to be the only one taken, that no one was going to know where I was being taken to.

And there's also this, just this general fear that you have, I mean, I'm on TV all the time, and I become sort of a very visible target. And so me being taken by myself, even though we are all, quote unquote, doing the same thing, the same legal thing, that maybe this person had a vendetta against me and that's why I was being taken. These are the thoughts that were sort of going through my head, that maybe they were trying to send a message to the messenger. But when they came around the corner, I was like, OK, we now have witnesses. We now have multiple people. And now at least there's someone to talk to when we're sort of going through this unbelievable, crazy, crazy situation that none of us could have imagined us being in.

Lisa Cohen: When you're thinking maybe they have a vendetta, maybe they're targeting me specifically, were you at all thinking maybe it's because I'm Black?

Omar Jimenez: Yeah, that was definitely part of what was going through my mind. Because, I've thought about this a good bit in the moment and then afterwards as well. The biggest part about being Black in that moment was not so much actually assuming that they took me because I was Black. That actually was far from my mind. What was really in my mind at that moment was, sort of, you go back to the conversations that I had as a kid and with parents about sort of this in-between zone where a kid or a Black guy, in most cases, is picked up by police. But then what happens before they get to jail? There's this period in between where you're completely at the officer's discretion. Anything could happen. It's just you two. And that's a lot of times where we see some of these cases go so poorly. And we saw what they did on live television. What are they going to do when it's not on live TV? And so I think that was the biggest part of being Black in that moment, that I don't I want to speak for everyone, but I don't think would have been the first thought for a white kid or even an Asian kid or Hispanic kid. They might come into that with a different set of mind. But for me, it was knowing that I am completely at the mercy of these officers. And even the case that I covered first getting out of college with Freddie Gray.

Lisa Cohen: uh huh.

Omar Jimenez: At the end of the day, that was a story about a Black kid who got into a police van alive and got out of the police van injured to the point where he needed to be in the hospital and eventually died. And no officer never got convicted for what happened, for that death. And so that's the extreme where your mind starts going that they could do it and get away with it.

Lisa Cohen: And that's where your mind went,.

Omar Jimenez : Yeah.

Lisa Cohen: So then what happened?

(start of video excerpt -
”Apple Watch”)

Omar: So now finally, we are all together loaded into this police van, cuffed, pressed up against the back wall. We sat there for probably a good 35, 40 minutes, just not going anywhere. Doors closed, but no one was driving anywhere. We just kind of saw the flashing lights outside of the tiny window that they had in there.

I had my Apple watch still on. They didn't confiscate my Apple watch. And so I got notifications, you know, every time you get a text, a call, a tweet mention, and it was going off incessantly. I could feel it behind my back. But the issue was I couldn't even look at it because it was behind my back. All I could do was just feel my Apple watch vibrating on my back the entire time, just like, man, people are calling. I can, I can just feel the different types of notifications. So it was this weird feeling of being the story, but also not even, not knowing quite what the story is to the outside world just yet.

Lisa Cohen: That sounds so surreal.

Omar Jimenez: Yeah, no, it was wild.

(end of video excerpt)

But then after after about 40 minutes, a way, too long time, the vehicle started to move and we’re taken to the Hennepin County Public Safety Building, I believe is what's called, in downtown Minneapolis. And we were at this processing center basically, and doors swing open and a guy comes up with a clipboard, gets all of our information, you know, first and last name, you know age, all that stuff, and says, "Alright, I'll be right back." Then, about twenty minutes later, he comes back and says, "Who all here is with CNN?"

Omar Jimenez: And you know…

Lisa Cohen: (laughs)

Omar Jimenez: … we all sort of raised our hands and he says, "OK," closed the door leaves. And then about twenty minutes after that, he comes out and says, "All right, guys, come on out here."

(start of video excerpt “Mom Is Watching”)

Little do we know that behind the scenes are a flurry of phone calls going on where people at the show had been calling a state senator that had just been on with the show, who helped them get in touch with the governor's office. Who woke up the governor. The governor helped make calls. All this is happening, you know, at five, between five a.m. and six a.m. local time in the Central Time Zone in Minneapolis. So super early, people are being woken up. Our CEO’s making calls too, he actually called my mom to tell her that “We are doing everything we can to get your son out,” because my mom was also watching live as that happened and so....

Lisa Cohen: Wait your mom was watching live as this happened?

Omar Jimenez: Powerless to do anything. All she can do is just sit there and watch it in front of her eyes. So our CEO called her to try and calm her down and try is the, is the key word there.

Lisa Cohen: Oh my God.

Omar Jimenez: And eventually, I don't know if the final call is from the governor, but I believe it was, to the sheriff's office station. They are saying, hey, get 'em out, what are you doing? And it was a few minutes after that call that they came and got us and we were given our stuff. And we were, we were free.

(end of video excerpt)

(start of video excerpt “Bold Faced Lie”)

It was a surreal, just surreal hour and a half that felt like it took days. But of course, when we got out, it only been just about an hour and a half, hour 40 minutes that could have gone sideways at any moment. But thankfully, it didn't. It did not.

Lisa Cohen: Did you ever find out anything more about what happened?

Omar Jimenez: Nope, never found out anything more about why that happened, who did it, who gave the order, how that could have even happened in the first place, never found out anything else. I'd asked. I've asked, but nothing. **The only thing we ever had was the tweet that was put out by the Minnesota State Patrol after I had been released, a tweet that was just a bold faced lie, but they put it out anyway. They said that in the process of clearing the streets this morning, we inadvertently arrested CNN reporters. Once we confirmed they were members of the media, they were promptly released. Ok. I'll give that to you for 15 minutes. But as I mentioned before, we sat in that police van for about 40 minutes. In that time. And this is assuming that you didn't believe us when you saw the camera crew. This is assuming you didn't believe my press credential, my CNN press credential I was showing..

Lisa Cohen: Right.

Omar Jimenez: You have my name, Google me, turn on a TV, we're live on TV, everyone's talking about it in that moment, there was ample opportunity to verify whether I was a reporter or not for CNN. It just didn't happen. They just didn't care in that moment. And I actually think that is what I take away from this experience the most. Of course, I was calm. Of course, it was a symbol for what many Black communities are going through throughout the country and trying to make it through interactions with police. I was just lucky enough to have it filmed. Of course, all of that folds into it, but it's more so the fact that police put out this story, if our cameras weren't rolling as irrefutable evidence to that narrative, that would be the story. And for the rest of the time, it would be my word versus theirs. All you have is the police narrative to be put out, what is being missed. And I think that is maybe the more important lesson I take with me journalistically and as a human as well.

(end of video excerpt)

Lisa Cohen: So obviously there's speculation here, but do you think race was involved?

Omar Jimenez: I, it's hard to say based on the experience that I had had, you know, it wasn't it wasn't like, I’m trying to think of what would have been made it more obvious, like one of my coworkers, a white coworker, was reporting around that same area about a block away on the other side of the police perimeter.

Lisa Cohen: Right.

Omar Jimenez: And he didn't have a camera crew. He was just there with his cell phone. He was waiting on a camera crew to show up and he was approached by officers, but he showed his press I.D. and they said, all right, have a good day. And so when you look at that experience versus mine, where I have a camera crew,

Lisa Cohen: Right

Omar Jimenez: I'm live on TV, I'm also showing my press ID and I get treated this way, you can't help but wonder. Right. And so it wasn't like there was an obvious he called me the N-word and said or said, all right, finally gotcha. Or anything like that.

Lisa Cohen: Or arrested you and left your white producer standing there.

Omar Jimenez: Exactly. It wasn't it wasn't as obvious as that. But I think the bigger significance for the Black experience was about sort of what I mentioned earlier, that this happens all the time in Black communities across the country. The difference is there is not a live camera crew to document it. And when Black people try to bring their stories to the press or to wherever, they suffer from a lack of credibility, when this experience should lend more credibility to those in the community, seeing what type of narratives can be put out by police, at least in the early stages, and especially when it can make them look bad. And so that, I think, is sort of the, the, the biggest Black experience that I take away from this as opposed to. Oh, yeah, they were just targeting me because I'm Black. Maybe that was part of things, but to me it just wasn't super apparent in that moment.

Lisa Cohen: So can I ask you, ha s this affected you, like what effect has this whole thing had on you in the in the days or months since?

Omar Jimenez: The biggest effect it's had is it's just increased the, uh, increased the spotlight, the magnifying glass on me and the actions I do as a person. And I say that first because now I started to wrestle with this idea of, OK, well this happened. What does this mean? Am I now a civil rights leader? Am I now a a symbol? Am I should I be saying more? Should I be doing more because of this experience that I, that happened to me?

I wasn't really sure what exactly to do, because in some ways, even though on paper it sounds nice, oh, you just go back to doing your job like normal. It just wasn't a possibility just because of the attention, because of the pressures, just internally and externally. Um, so the few months after that, I think took a little bit of adjustment to sort of, unplug, reset, and sort of come back to Earth, so to speak. I think emotionally it was a little easier to get past this than I think people might assume; I just feel like I have a really good network of friends and family around me. We were able to talk through it. And at the end of the day, I was OK. I think that would be a different conversation if I physically was not OK, if I was hurt in any way. I think that would be more difficult to deal with.

Lisa Cohen: When you say there were pressures on you, what do you mean?

Omar Jimenez: I think, you know, I think pressures, a lot of it was internal of, again, sort of that debate of, well, now I have this platform. Now I have all these followers out of nowhere. What do what, what do I do? You know, I feel like I should be different right?

I feel like I should be doing more or doing something different. And it was just trying to figure out like, what exactly is that? What do I do? And so that was a lot of the pressure because, you know, you're having conversations with your mom, you’re having a conversation with your friends, with your bosses, with your agent, and everyone's sort of saying, they're coming at the same prompt with different with different suggestions and different questions, you know. Agent's like, "all right, we got to lean into this, you know, like let's let's keep the momentum going." Moms, like, "Why don't we just take a break? And know bosses are like, "well, what do you need? Do you need to take a break? We're happy to, but we're happy to assign you to more stories." And friends are like, "well, do you want to do something bigger outside of work? Like, do we want to do a book? Do we want to try and write something extracurricular?" There were general pressures and none of them were bad. It was just a question of how do I want to proceed?

Lisa Cohen: And how do you want to proceed?

Omar Jimenez: Honestly, I was just getting back to work, I was just trying to get back to the job.

And I just think it added a level of of urgency and significance to the work that we do as journalists that I think was a little bit of a motivator for me, to sort of, all right, clearly this work is important. I think we all fall into the rut sometimes when you're like, oh, no one cares about this. Why am I covering this? We all we all get into that rut sometimes. But this I think was, it was a good motivator and a reminder of you know, the work that we do affects people. It clearly, it stands for something because if the police narrative was the only one out there, we would just have a wrong account of history.

Lisa Cohen: That's so interesting. So the idea not so much that you were a witness, but that what happened to you was witnessed, drove home to you the importance of people being out there witnessing.

Omar Jimenez: Yeah, yeah. And I think up until that point, again, I think you get caught up. in just, in this being a job, you know, like any other job, you have good days you have bad days. You have bad days where you're the most important person in the world. You have days where you like, "Nobody cares about what I'm doing. Why am I covering this story?" So I think that was sort of a reminder of why I got into the career overall. And you don't have those moments every day on the job and nor should you. They come every once in a while. But this one was the most visceral, the most, just, Wow. You documented history in that moment. And up until that point, I don't think I'd been in a situation where I singularly felt that.

Lisa Cohen: So this project is in part of getting oral histories of people who have been in the middle of different kinds of incidents because they're press. But it's also about getting a sense of and maybe not so much in your case, but a sense of this, this idea that the the press is being more and more treated like they're an enemy of the people, that they're disseminating fake news. And, you know, no one told you, hey, I'm arresting you because you're reporting fake news. That wasn't your story. But do you do you have thoughts about that? Do you sense it. Do you understand it?

Omar Jimenez: Yeah, I mean, definitely. How can you work at a place like CNN and not understand ityou know, it's it's one of those where we

Lisa Cohen: Right

Omar Jimenez: for the longest time, we were among the president's, President Trump's favorite targets. And, you know, for a while it felt sort of benign of, OK, clearly he doesn't like us, but we're going to keep doing our jobs. But then you realize once you actually get out into the world and you see people that are mimicking that behavior, it becomes a threat because now all of a sudden those words have tangible, have tangible effects on you and on the streets you're covering. So, of course, you hear people when they come up to you and they ask, "Oh, who are you with?" Now you're like analyzing, well, who is this person? Like do I just say I'm with the news or I'm with the media or I'm with, or can I say I'm with CNN? And if I say I'm with CNN, and he has a reaction, what's the worst that can happen based on this scenario? Will everyone turn and go, “oh, my gosh, let's get him?” So those are the things that you're now thinking about, that you talk about those factors you prepare for. We're not wearing branded shirts. We're not wearing branded microphones going into these situations, it's just another something for people to jump onto that we don't want to draw attention to ourselves for.

I actually have used it in some ways as a motivator because, look, the microscope is on us like never before because people are literally looking for a tiny slip up just so they can blame it on fake news just so they can blame it on something nefarious. Innocent mistakes from before, which we know journalists have made since the beginning of time, are now or were now being viewed as deliberate attempts to take down the president or deliberate attempts to take down American democracy. And so what that tells me is you've got to make your work as, as foolproof as you can possibly make it. In some ways, I do it when I'm writing a script, knowing that certain conspiracy theories or knowing that certain, certain ideas are out there and trying to subconsciously back them down. When I'm doing the writing, maybe I make an extra line about the vaccine being safe. Maybe I make an extra line about, you know, about QAnon being a false conspiracy theory.

Lisa Cohen: So I have a question that I ask everybody, which is why is it, why is it important that we talk about this idea of people are turning against the press? What is, how does that translate to real people in their lives? Because, you know, I I'm at Columbia Journalism School. You're a reporter in that world. We have our bubble in which we feel like these are the most important issues in the world. I think it's hard for people who aren't part of our world to get how this translates to something that that is important to to everyone, if it is.

Omar Jimenez: There's a reason it's noted in the Constitution, there's a reason it's the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States because it's essential to making democracy work. Being able to trust the information that is being disseminated throughout your country is essential for you to make the right grocery shopping choices, to make the right decisions at the polling boxes, to get the right medicines. You can't look at any facet of life without realizing that you are instilling some level of trust in the information that is being put in front of you. It just happens to be our job.

Also, we know the fact that politicians, they're politicians, and so when they go out and try to run on certain messages or feed you, the American voter, a certain, certain lie or maybe a conspiracy theory, in some cases it's incumbent upon us, this is how democracy works. It's incumbent upon us to fact check that and provide you, the voter, who will be deciding representation for this country, a challenge on something that is actually a lie, so that you have the right information. That is the ecosystem of how democracy works, where you should be able to trust the information that's coming from the press. As reporters, we have to realize that in many cases, this bubble that is being talked about is very real and it's much more difficult to get outside of that bubble than I think people realize.

And it even comes down to hiring practices. If you have a newsroom full of Ivy League people, even if you are sending some of those Ivy League reporters to farms in Iowa, are they going to tell that story in the right through the right lens? Are they're going to tell that story in an authentic enough way that instills trust, not just in the coastal elites, but also those in the heartland who trusted you with the time to tell their story accurately. And those, that's the space that I think needs the most work, in my opinion. I think politics is always going to be politics and the spin and the craziness around that will always be there.

But what stories have been missed and how can we tell them in authentic ways, in ways that are, that are credible, again, not just to the audiences that you might be pushing for, but those that are actually living the story so that some of this trust starts to come back and we can have a more fully functioning democracy. And I just think that is the basic core of why it's so important that we do our jobs well, because at the end of the day, it matters in a democracy.