Death in Annapolis

By Hank Silverberg 

      This past week was not a good one for America.  Five people who worked for the Capital Gazette newspaper in Annapolis, Maryland were gunned down by a disgruntled reader who thought they had done something to harm him. Editor Gerald Fischman, Assistant Managing Editor Rob Hiaasen, sports reporter John McNamara, reporter Wendi Winters and sales assistant Rebecca Smith, were just doing their jobs, the same kind of job that hundreds of journalists in towns big and small do every day. People who work at small newspapers like the Gazette don’t make a lot of money. They rarely get national recognition. They don’t cover foreign summits, White House briefings or international intrigue.                                                            Most of the stories they write are about their community. What is the school board up to with your child’s education?  How is the city council going to vote on a new zoning plan? What’s going on with local road projects? And in the case of the Gazette, what’s going on at the Maryland General Assembly? 

http://www.capitalgazette.com/digitaledition/cgnews-digital-edition-ngux-htmlstory.html

     They do this important work for all of us.                                                                                                                                                                                                         Threats and insults to reporters are not rare, they are made all the time. There’s always someone mad about a story that puts them in a bad light, or quotes someone they don’t like. But most of the time those threats don’t lead to mass murder.      

             This time, a Laurel, Maryland resident, whose name I am purposely not using, thought he was defamed simply because the paper reported about his arrest and conviction in a local harassment case. It wasn’t an editorial or opinion piece, just straight reporting of the facts. It was the type of story that appears in every edition of your local paper. The suspect filed a lawsuit a few years ago. He lost his defamation case in court, made threats against the paper and the people who worked there, followed up with internet threats and then after years of hostility, killed five people.                                                                                                  Some uninformed media types jumped to conclusions. Sean Hannity, who apparently doesn’t know what a “fact” is, blamed it on Democratic Congresswoman Maxine Waters, who has been radical, and aggressive in her very vocal criticism of President Trump’s immigration policy. Hannity also blamed former President Obama, and frankly, I have no clue what he was thinking on that one.                                                                                                 A few others went off the rails and aimed their criticism at President Trump, because of his “enemy of the people” diatribe about journalists and his everyday finger pointing at what he perceives to be “fake news.” Those hostile words are a figment of the President’s imagination and may not be relevant here.                                                                                                                            In contrast, most media types, and I include most journalists, expressed shock about the shooting and waited to get the facts. Since the shooter isn’t talking, we have no way of knowing if that was part of his motivation for buying a shotgun a year ago and planning an attack on a newspaper he had been threatening for years.                                                                But here are a few things that can be said.                                                              The “thoughts and prayers” reaction to every shooting is a useless cliché, and frankly insulting to the intelligence of the American people. This shooting, though this time aimed at journalists, was the 195^th mass shooting this year. That says more about gun violence than journalism or politics.  

        And finally, when you pick up a copy of your local paper, or read it on line, if you live in a community that is still lucky enough to have one, remember the people who work there are just like you. They have families, their kids go to local schools, they pay taxes, and your life would be a lot more complicated without the work they do. 

      Journalists are your friends, not your enemy. On TV, on radio and in print they are there to help keep corporate malfeasance and government corruption in check and they help us deal with the complex issues we face day to day and as nation.  At the local level they do it for the love of community and country and a sense of duty.                                                                 It’s okay to get angry at a story you may not like. But the messenger (the journalist) should be praised for taking on the important role in a free society, not attacked.  That is a concept that needs to be repeated, from the Oval office to the streets of every community in America.                                           Our Founding Fathers thought journalists were so important they made the press the only profession protected by the U.S. Constitution.   

                  (You comments and suggestions are welcome)