Newspaper reporters routinely show up at scenes of violent crime as police descend to restore order and launch investigations. The journalists take notes, talk to officers and witnesses, and try to make sense of the tragedy.
Last week, one shooting episode happened at the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Maryland.
Shootings are frighteningly commonplace in American workplaces. People in virtually every store, factory, warehouse or office dread what happened on Thursday: Blasts of gunfire. Workers dead or wounded. The caterwaul of sirens.
The killing of five journalists at the Capital Gazette newsroom and the shooting of several more is heartbreaking.
Word of a shooting in the newsroom spread rapidly through the media far beyond Maryland as reporters reflected on their memories of working at the Capital or community newspapers like it and contemplated the possibility that their newsrooms could become scenes of violence, too.
Police swept through The Baltimore Sun’s building as a precaution, and New York police reportedly fanned out to news organisations in the city just in case. Other media companies said they were increasing their security. At a time of political divisiveness when views of the news industry itself have become starkly polarised, many jumped quickly to speculation about whether the metaphorical war on the media had become shockingly literal.
Journalists in other countries are murdered with shocking regularity. Before Thursday’s attack, the Committee to Protect Journalists listed 1,306 such killings since 1992, only seven of which occurred in the United States. But after seeing elected officials shot, from former Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords to Louisiana Rep. Steve Scalise, the fear that journalists could be targeted because of their role in public life is something most workers have felt. That’s why so many reporters across the US got a sickening feeling on Thursday afternoon – they couldn’t believe something like this had happened, except that they could.
Killing like this is nothing but madness, no matter what terms it’s couched in. One can never understand it. But it must stop.
The fear journalists feel today is no different from the one high school students felt after Parkland or clubgoers felt after the Pulse or people at music festivals felt after Las Vegas. The truth is, nowhere can feel safe anymore. Not churches, not shopping malls, not factories, not office buildings. No one can feel sure that someone won’t target them for some reason, and one can certainly have no assurance that a madman will be stopped from obtaining a gun.
Soon, America will begin the ritual of dissecting how today’s murderer obtained his weapon, what type it was and whether any particular proposal for gun control might have stopped the killer. Enough. Whatever may prove to be the case, America is awash in too many guns and that they are too easy to get. The country allows individuals to amass insane amounts of firepower and its systems to keep them out of the wrong hands are full of holes.
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