The White House Correspondents’ Association has condemned an attack on a television cameraman working at U.S. President Donald Trump’s rally in El Paso, Tex.
The association’s president, Olivier Knox, said Tuesday the group is relieved that “this time, no one was seriously hurt.”
Mr. Knox says the President should make clear to his supporters that violence against reporters is unacceptable.
There was a brief scuffle on a news media platform away from the stage on Monday night, when a man began shoving members of the news media and was restrained.
Michael Glassner, chief operating officer of Mr. Trump’s re-election campaign, says an individual “involved in a physical altercation with a news cameraman” was removed from the rally. He praised “the swift action from venue security and law-enforcement officers.”
“BBC cameraman Ron Skeans was violently pushed and shoved by a member of the crowd while covering a President Trump rally in Texas last night,” a BBC spokesman said in an e-mail on Tuesday.
A 36-second clip from Mr. Skeans’s camera before, during and after the shove was widely circulated on social media on Tuesday. It shows a protester in a red Make America Great Again cap, who has not been publicly identified, shouting at members of the news media as he is restrained by someone who appears to be part of the event’s security team.
As the man struggles, the crowd’s chant shifts from “U.S.A.” to “Let him go.”
Gary O’Donoghue, the BBC Washington correspondent who covered the El Paso rally on Monday, said the supporter had “tried to smash” the camera before security escorted him out of the venue.
The BBC condemned the attack. “It is clearly unacceptable for any of our staff to be attacked for doing their job,” the Tuesday statement said. The President could see what was happening and checked “that all was okay,” the statement added.
Since the beginning of his presidency, Mr. Trump has had a strained relationship with the news media. He has repeatedly called journalists “the enemy of the people,” and he used the term “Fake News” on Twitter at least 174 times last year alone.
In August, experts from the United Nations and a human rights body condemned the President’s attacks on the news media and warned that they could incite violence against journalists.