Journalists face growing dangers

Each year, the Newseum in Washington, D.C., rededicates its Journalists Memorial in recognition of the profession’s growing dangers and to those who have died in the pursuit of bringing news and information to the public.

This year, 21 names will be added to this list, representing those who were killed or died in the pursuit of news in 2018. Their names join the 2,323 already there and dating to 1837.

Also on June 3, no newspapers will be displayed in the exhibit outside the Newseum on Pennsylvania Avenue, inside the building or online. In their place will be blacked-out pages featuring the hashtag #WithoutNews campaign. This encourages the public to consider what a world without journalists to report the news might look like.

This rededication also is an annual reminder to the public that pursuing the news, especially when bringing it to light is unpopular, is not a walk in the park.

Until recently, it was pretty much a given that journalists in foreign countries were those who feared for their safety and their lives, but last June 28, the killing of five employees of The Capital Gazette newspaper in Annapolis, Maryland, has upped the ante for media workers in this country.

A number of columnists have attempted to make a connection between this shocking event and the anti-media environment championed by President Donald Trump.

We have to be careful in trying to make this quantum leap, because the alleged shooter in the Annapolis killings had a long-standing dispute with the newspaper, and there is no indication that he was motivated even in the least to carry out this unthinkable act because he was egged on to do so by the words of the president and his equally anti-media partisans.

When I was a reporter, editor and publisher, the idea of some aggrieved subject of a news article appearing at our doorway with a weapon and gunning down innocent employees never even crossed our minds.

During my 58 years as a journalist, fists have been shaken at me, obscene words were spewed at me, I have had anonymous phone threats and online posts, and I have had really angry people who didn’t like what I wrote get in my face as I was trying to do my job, but I have never been assaulted or shot at.

Among hundreds of other colleagues at other papers, there was only one incident with which I am familiar where an assault occurred. An angry reader, who had been the subject of a news article written by a reporter at the paper, punched Jim Sachetti, editor of the Bloomsburg Press-Enterprise, in the mouth. He was not seriously injured, but it took us journalists by surprise. For a few months, we had our guards up.

There was no security in the newspaper buildings in which I worked. I retired from full-time newspaper work at the end of 1998. I used to joke with my colleagues at the newspaper where I was publisher that if an angry reader wanted to take it out on the newspaper by physical confrontation, mine was the first office he or she would see.

Raised voices? Sure, I encountered lots of them; four-letter words and angry denunciation of the newspaper for publishing a story someone didn’t like? Occasionally. But it never came to violence.

But times have changed. The steady deterioration of civility and common decency aimed toward journalists is really troubling. Trump’s famous declaration of “fake news” has been taken up as a battle cry by his backers to create an atmosphere of suspicion and mistrust of the media. I was stunned, as were many other Americans, when the president called the news media the “enemy of the people,” a characterization often used by dictators and autocrats in other countries who systematically did away with opponents.

The concern is that it sets the stage for events such as the one in Bozeman, Montana, on May 24, 2017, when multimillionaire Republican congressional candidate Greg Gianforte body-slammed reporter Ben Jacobs of the Guardian newspaper to the ground, jumped on him and started pounding him with his fists. Gianforte was annoyed that Jacobs asked an unwelcome question.

Gianforte pleaded guilty to an assault charge, but went on to win a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives and was re-elected in 2018.

Reporters have a target on them. There is a concern that the strident rhetoric coming from the administration might be interpreted as a green light to harm them or their colleagues.

The killing of the five employees in Annapolis was a wake-up call not only for journalists but for the public. Journalists now realize that they don’t have to be working for a highly visible, major media outlet such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN or MSNBC which come under almost daily criticism.

While violence against journalists is nothing new, it seems attacks are escalating in recent years. And this is a scary thought.

By Bruce Frassinelli | tneditor@tnonline.com