After JB Nicholas reported on a pickup truck that struck and seriously injured a cyclist in Malone, New York, three police officers knocked on his door just after midnight on Aug. 2, 2026, and told him to stop contacting the driver’s family.
“The family that you’re messaging, that was involved in the accident,” a police sergeant told him, according to body camera footage. “You need to not message them anymore.”
The sergeant warned Nicholas that the family would pursue charges if he continued contacting them. Nicholas replied that the family had contacted him first, asking him to take down his reporting.
As the officer turned to leave, he commented that Nicholas’ story “was nothing but a huge lie.”
Nicholas, who runs the online outlet The Free Lance News, told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker that the late-night visit followed an earlier confrontation between him and police at the nearby crash scene.
“When you put it all together, it totally looks like an attempt to bully or scare a reporter into not covering a criminal investigation literally in my own backyard,” Nicholas said.
Nicholas rushed to the site after hearing about the crash. Police told him the crash could be fatal and ordered him away from the scene, according to a video he posted on X.
“Mind your business,” one of the officers said in the video.
Nicholas replied, “I have a right to observe police activity in a public space.”
Nicholas told the Tracker that the sergeant who later came to his home also told witnesses at the scene not to speak with him and said he was not a “real journalist.” Nicholas was wearing a press credential at the time.
After police blocked him from the scene, Nicholas interviewed witnesses about the crash. One told him the driver had struck the cyclist intentionally.
After the report was published, the driver’s parents demanded Nicholas take down the story. He refused. Hours later, police went to his home.
Nicholas later defended his reporting in a video posted to The Free Lance News. “Even if I did call him, that’d be a legitimate exercise of journalism. And the police don’t have any right to interfere with it in Malone, New York, or anywhere else.”
In a Facebook comment, the Malone Police Department wrote that they received a harassment complaint from an involved party. “We made contact with you as a result of that, not because of your reports,” the department wrote, according to the video.
“These are the kind of things that should not be happening in America,” Nicholas told the Tracker. “You interfere with my reporting, you interfere with my ability to gather facts, and then show up at my door at midnight.”
This content originally appeared on U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database and was authored by U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database.