A Congressman Threatened a Reporter for Recording Him

A Maryland congressman told a student reporter she could face prosecution for recording him during a press gaggle. Other reporters were recording him too. That distinction is the part that should make anyone pause.

Rep. Andy Harris, a Republican from Maryland, made the threat on Oct. 13 after a debate with Democratic challenger Dan Schwartz in Cambridge. Video of the exchange shows him telling Cat Murphy, a reporter for Capital News Service and a University of Maryland graduate student, that she did not have permission to record him. He said that if she recorded, “we will refer you to the prosecutor.”

Murphy answered that everyone in the room was recording. Harris continued anyway. He said Maryland was a “two-party state,” appeared to invoke the state’s wiretapping law, and called for an officer to take her camera.

No camera was seized and no criminal charge was reported. But the threat itself matters. A public official should not casually reach for criminal prosecution when a journalist records him in public.

What the law actually covers

Maryland’s Wiretapping and Electronic Surveillance Act generally requires consent from all parties before someone records a private conversation. It is often described as an “all-party consent” law, though people commonly call it a two-party consent law.

The key word is private. The law protects conversations where people have a reasonable expectation of privacy. Courts have generally found that public settings, including exchanges without that expectation, may be recorded.

Harris was speaking with reporters after a debate. Multiple journalists were present. Several were openly recording. That is not a private phone call or a concealed recording in someone’s home.

Attorney Jeremy Eldridge told CBS News Baltimore that the law did not apply because the interaction took place in a public setting. Kevin Goldberg, vice president of the Freedom Forum, told NBC Washington that Maryland’s consent law would not apply because Harris was speaking to a group of reporters in a public space.

That does not mean every recording is lawful, or that journalists have unlimited rights in every setting. It means the facts here do not look like the kind of private conversation Maryland’s statute was written to address.

The part that stays with me

I want to be careful before calling this an abuse of power. Harris later defended himself, saying in a radio interview that the post-debate interviews were not a public forum and that he had a right to ask Murphy to stop recording.

He is entitled to make that argument. He is also entitled to decline questions, end an interview, or ask reporters to leave a space he controls. Those are normal tools available to any public figure.

But threatening prosecution is different. It uses the weight of criminal law against a person doing routine newsgathering. And he singled out Murphy even as other reporters recorded the same exchange.

That is what troubles me. Not the volume of the argument. Not the political theater around it. The idea that a reporter could be told, in front of other reporters, that her camera could make her a criminal.

Murphy is a student journalist. She was credentialed through Capital News Service, the University of Maryland’s news service. Her dean, Rafael Lorente, said she recorded openly in a public space alongside other news outlets and that doing so was her legal right.

The Society of Professional Journalists said it was deeply concerned by the threat. The group said journalists must be able to do their jobs without intimidation or threats of prosecution for routine newsgathering.

Why this reaches beyond one exchange

Most people will never stand in a post-debate gaggle. Most will never hold a press credential or ask a member of Congress a question on camera. But many people do record public meetings, school board sessions, town halls, and officials in public places.

The principle is the same. Public officials work for the public. When they speak to reporters, attend public events, or answer questions after a debate, recording is often how the public gets to see and judge what happened.

A lawmaker does not have to enjoy being filmed. He can dislike the question. He can think the coverage is unfair. He can say so plainly.

What he should not do is tell one journalist that recording him may be a crime when other journalists are doing the same thing in the same room. That turns a disagreement about access into a threat backed by police and prosecutors.

What remains unsettled

There is still room for dispute. Harris says the setting was not public. Legal experts quoted in reporting say the Maryland statute generally does not cover public press gatherings. Those positions cannot both be fully right, and the precise legal status of that particular gaggle has not been settled by a court.

That uncertainty is worth respecting. It is also why the threat deserves scrutiny rather than a quick dismissal.

If Harris believed the setting was private, he could have said so and explained why. He could have asked reporters to stop recording and accepted the consequences of that request. Instead, video shows him invoking prosecution and asking for an officer to intervene.

Harris later declined to apologize to Murphy, according to Reuters reporting.

I do not think the answer is to treat every uncomfortable encounter between an official and a reporter as a constitutional crisis. Public life is messy. Campaigns are tense. Reporters can be persistent. Officials can be defensive.

But a free press does not survive on goodwill alone. It depends on the ordinary expectation that a journalist can record a public official speaking to the press without being threatened with arrest.

That expectation should not depend on whether the official likes the question.

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