In Newsrooms, a Resolve to Carry On
A few weeks have passed now since a gunman took the lives of four journalists and a sales assistant In a brutal newsroom attack at the Capital Gazette in Annapolis. That weekend editors from the Detroit Free Press and Detroit News wrote moving editorials.
Nolan Finley of the News revealed that a group of fellow journalists there personally felt the resemblance to the harassment they had also been receiving for five years from a man sending emails spewing some of the most vile vulgar, racist and anti-Semitic poison they had ever read. Peter Bhatia, Editor of the Free Press declared that “we are fact-driven. We are motivated by truth-telling. And the fact that journalists have now joined high school students and concert-goers as targets of gun violence in our country doesn’t change a thing.”
I started my career in journalism and publishing at a newspaper in Michigan and worked my way into an Investigative beat. A fellow reporter on another local paper was Investigating an illegal abortion mill that involved the local mafia. He let colleagues know that he was getting death threats. Calls went around and several of us joined him that evening to play poker all night. We didn’t have guns or even knives. But we knew we couldn’t let him face the threat alone.Nothing ever happened, but I was proud that we looked out for each other.
Today I worry that such threats not only continue. but a disturbed and angry man in Annapolis finally carried out his threats with a firearm. While I am proud that journalists are not deterred, I hope that as a nation, we can find a path back to respect for the important role of the media in a free society. Bhatia concluded his editorial by quoting Josh McKerrow, the Annapolis photojournalist. “The shrill chaos seems to be winning. But it’s not winning – and it’s not going to win.”
https://www.freep.com/story/opinion/2018/07/05/journalism-after-annapolis/758686002/
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