europeancorrespondent.com

The US ambassador had Belgian police stop our reporting

robtherobber · 679 points · 319 comments · ayer

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elil17ayer

For additional context, tensions are already high surrounding the US ambassador after he directly insulted multiple Belgian politicians and also attempted to interfere with local criminal judicial proceedings.

elricayer

I hope the journalists in question will lodge a complaint with the Belgian police watchdog, Comité P: https://comitep.be Belgium has been pretty repressive towards certain journalists for a while now. Our "World Press Freedom Index"-score has gone down a fair bit in recent years, and rightly so. The current prime minister and his friends have a history of litigating against journalists who exposed some questionable deals, so it's all to be expected.

MetaWhirledPeasayer

"The US ambassador had Belgian police stop our reporting" Or reworded: "Belgian police stop our reporting simply because some foreign ambassador asked for it"

trwhitehace 23 horas

So much for the "free speech" Vance hounded us Europeans with. All lies, of course.

pngwenayer

I’d say the embassy did a good job of exporting the American journalistic experience. The only point of inauthenticity is that neither journalist suffered any lasting physical harm.