The Minnesota chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, the country’s largest organization of reporters and editors, has just released a statement in response to recent confrontations between local police and media-makers in the weeks prior to the Republican National Convention. Calling actions against a KSTP photographer and a trio of New York new-media artists “definite warning signs,” the SPJ states that efforts “to intimidate journalists never work. Such misplaced heavy-handedness only escalates tensions–something we don’t need as thousands of respected delegates fill the convention hall next week and thousand more citizens take to the streets to express themselves.”