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‘I am being detained’: CNN correspondent turns up drama to hype ‘mostly peaceful protest’ experience

June 10, 2025 | | Print Article

The drama of a CNN correspondent’s on-air detainment covering Los Angeles’ “peaceful protests” faced a crushing reality check: “You are not that important.”

(Video Credit: CNN)

Like broadcasters crouching down in ankle-deep water covering flooding, sensationalism remains all too common for corporate media correspondents. So it was Monday night when, hours after law enforcement ordered “demonstrators” to disperse, CNN national correspondent Jason Carroll found himself “being detained” during a live broadcast.

“Wait one second, John,” host Laura Coates told CNN chief law enforcement analyst John Miller during extended coverage. “Hold on. I wanna — Jason, what’s going on? I hear you. Am I seeing Jason Carroll being … What happened, Jason?”

“I’m being detained. I’m being detained, Laura,” Miller could be heard saying as his cameraman followed the police escort out of the area where protesters had been boxed in by law enforcement after having been given ample time to leave. “I’m not being arrested, correct, officers?”

“Did you hear what he told you?” an officer asked. When the reporter replied “No,” the cop explained, “We’re letting you go, but you can’t come back. Because then if you come back in, then you go. Okay, please?”

“So here’s what happened, Laura,” Carroll began to explain after someone from the New York Times said they had video of the interaction. “I was called over, and the officer told me to put my hands behind my back. I said, ‘Am I being arrested?’ He said, ‘You are being detained.’ I was walked out of the area. They took down my information.”

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Miller noted law enforcement’s job was tougher because “you have anarchist groups and agitators who show up and say, ‘Well, I have a blog, so therefore I’m press. So, therefore, even though I’ve been throwing bottles and screaming epithets, I’m not part of the protest. I want to be treated as media.’ So, they sort through people one at a time.”

Moments earlier, near the top of the hour at 9 p.m. Pacific, Carroll explained on-air that all of the protesters — dubbed “demonstrators” — who had failed to comply with the order to disperse would be detained. Of course, that report itself came six hours after the correspondent had been heard saying the order had been given, “So, we’re gonna have to see what happens next in terms of that.”

Corporate media’s coverage of the violence in Los Angeles opposing deportations of illegal aliens appeared par for the course for the industry that had brought the world the term “fiery, but mostly peaceful” when describing the streets of Minneapolis burning to the ground amid Black Lives Matter riots in 2020.

This included ABC7 anchor Marc Brown describing the scene as “just a bunch of people having fun watching cars burn.”

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The sense of dramatization that came with the recounting of the events as Carroll and his crew were escorted outside the law enforcement perimeter was met with mockery and scorn on social media of the “horrific ordeal.”

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Kevin Haggerty
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