Journalists forcibly removed from covering a story. Facing down tear gas and hostile police. Finding themselves under arrest. It’s a situation that is supposed to happen in other countries, not the United States. But last night in Ferguson, MO, journalists found themselves facing exactly those conditions, lending credence to the fact that the United States – despite all its support in its laws and customs – does not top the world’s rankings in terms of freedom of the press.

Two DC-based reporters, the Huffington Post’s Ryan Reilly and the Washington Post’s Wesley Lowery, were working in a McDonald’s near the scene of the protests that have become a nightly event in Ferguson when police officers entered the restaurants and demanded they leave. In taking too long to do so, the two reported after the fact, the police chose to place them both under arrest. ‘As they took me into custody, the officers slammed me into a soda machine, at one point setting off the Coke dispenser,” Lowrey wrote in his account of the confrontation. ‘They put plastic cuffs on me, then they led me out the door.” Both were later released with no charges – but also with no police report […]