Fox News Correspondent Chased By Washington, D.C. Mob

A correspondent for Fox News Channel was harassed and chased by protesters in Washington, D.C., the latest example of TV journalists facing potential harm as they try to do their regular job of chronicling events as they happen.

Leland Vittert, a Fox News staffer who has been with the cable-news outlet since 2010, is no stranger to reporting from roiled settings. He has served as a foreign correspondent in Jerusalem and has previously reported from protest scenes. But he found himself in a dangerous situation early Saturday morning when some members of a crowd of protesters in Washington D.C.’s Lafayette Park, outside the White House, began to move toward him, chanting at him and chasing him as he and his crew and security personnel tried to leave the scene,

In footage captured by The Daily Caller, a conservative news-and-opinion site, Vittert and his crew are shown trying to leave the scene as people shout profanities at them, throw things at them and pursue them. The scene surfaced less than 24 hours after a CNN reporter and crew were detained by Minnesota State Police as they tried to cover protests in Minneapolis tied to the death of George Floyd, an African-American man who died after a police officer put a knee to his neck over the course of more than eight minutes.

Vittert called the encounter “the scariest situation I’ve been in since I got chased out of Tahrir Square by a mob, and this was equally scary.”

The scene drew criticism from some prominent anchors:

Prior to joining Fox News Channel, Vittert worked for a number of major-market TV stations, including KDVR in Denver and WFTY in Orlando.