Nancy Guthrie’s Home and the Arrest of the YouTubers for the “Crime” of Livestreaming

​The disappearance of Nancy Guthrie is the stuff of nightmares.

The 84-year-old mother of “Today” co-host Savannah Guthrie vanished from her home in the Catalina Foothills outside Tucson on Feb. 1. Investigators found evidence that she had been taken against her will, including Guthrie’s blood at the scene. Security footage showed a masked, armed figure tampering with a doorbell camera. Five months later, Guthrie remains missing, and the FBI says the case is still being investigated as a kidnapping for ransom.

It is hardly surprising that this story has attracted intense public attention and the usual pop-up conspiracy theories. It has also attracted a collection of true-crime streamers and YouTubers who have camped out near Nancy Guthrie’s home, livestreaming developments and offering their theories to online audiences.

Some of their behavior has been, to put it mildly, appalling. Neighbors have complained of harassment, public urination, filming of residents, and creators turning their quiet neighborhood into a stage for online speculation. Law enforcement has every right to enforce laws against trespassing, obstruction, harassment, and other unlawful conduct.

But as Taylor Seely of The Arizona Republic reports, law enforcement records raise a different question: Were some streamers arrested not for breaking the law, but because authorities did not like who they were or what they were doing?

Three streamers – Alexander Zabel, Troy Bradshaw, and Damian Enderle – were arrested or cited in June on public nuisance or obstruction charges. “But unlike Zabel, neither Enderle nor Bradshaw were accused of urinating in public,” Seely wrote. “They were not on private property, and, on this day at least, they were not obstructing the roadway. Incident reports of their arrests list the crimes of ‘live streaming and lingering.’”

One detective revealed a troubling attitude in an incident report, describing the streamers as “so-called journalists” who exploit tragedy “to increase their social media followers and potentially benefit financially.”

He may well be right. But unprofessionalism is not a First Amendment standard.

The First Amendment does not authorize police officers, sheriffs, or judges to distinguish between noble journalism and crummy journalism. It does not protect only reporters with press passes, journalism degrees, editors, or respectable business models. Nor does constitutional protection disappear when someone is sensationalistic, tasteless, self-promoting, or hoping to make money.

If it did, government would be empowered to decide who counts as a “real” journalist. That power would inevitably be used to reward favored media and punish disfavored speakers.

The Supreme Court has long recognized that freedom of the press belongs to more than an officially recognized professional class. In the digital age, the line between journalist, citizen journalist, blogger, podcaster, livestreamer, and ordinary citizen with a cellphone is increasingly difficult to draw.

This does not give YouTubers a license to trespass, block roads, threaten neighbors, or urinate on someone’s property. Conduct can be regulated through neutral laws that apply to everyone. But police cannot transform “public nuisance” into a catchall for people whose reporting they regard as exploitative or distasteful. Nor should the words “so-called journalist” ever become a predicate for arrest.

The tragedy of Nancy Guthrie deserves compassion, restraint, and serious journalism. Some online creators fall far short of those standards.
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The First Amendment protects them anyway.

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