Report went viral on Facebook.
Co-founder of Democracy Now and award-winning journalist Amy Goodman was acquitted of riot charges on Monday for reporting an attack on Native American anti-pipeline protesters in North Dakota.
“District Judge John Grinsteiner did not find probable cause in the riot charge against Goodman,” reported Democracy Now. She surrendered on Monday after the prosecutor dropped criminal trespassing charges and filed the riot charge.
“This is a vindication of freedom of speech, of the First Amendment, of the public’s right to know,” Goodman told reporters on Monday. She called the media the “underground railroad of information”.
The report of Goodman on the protest of Native Americans in North Dakota against building a $3.8 billion North Dakota Access Pipeline near the Standing Rock Sioux reservation, close to the town of Cannon Ball, went viral on social media, with over 14 million views on Facebook alone.
The people of North Dakota allege that the pipeline construction will encroach on their tribal burial sites and pollute their water supply at the Reservation
The report showed the atrocities caused by the security guards hired by the pipeline company using dogs and pepper spray.
“People have gone through the fence, men, women, and children. The bulldozers are still going, and they’re yelling at the men in hard hats. One man in a hard hat threw one of the protesters down,” Goodman said in the report.
The issue got wide public attention after being taken up by mainstream media including CBS, NBC, NPR, CNN, MSNBC and The Huffington Post.
Goodman was faced with trespassing charges initially which was dropped and riot charges were added afterward.
“I came back to North Dakota to fight a trespass charge. They saw that they could never make that charge stick, so now they want to charge me with rioting,” said Goodman.
“I wasn’t trespassing, I wasn’t engaging in a riot, I was doing my job as a journalist by covering a violent attack on Native American protesters,” she added.
In the meanwhile, Documentary maker Deia Schlosberg is facing conspiracy charges after being detained for filming TransCanada’s Keystone Pipeline in Walhalla, North Dakota. The charges carry a 45-year sentence.