We are not the enemy and we are not fake

 

The end of Donald Trump’s narcissistic reign of terror brings such relief and joy to so many Americans we literally saw widespread dancing in the streets yesterday. This election returns some hope for common decency from the White House when speaking about women, ethnic minorities, disabled (let’s not forget Trump’s mocking of them), doctors, nurses, scientists … and my fellow media professionals.

My thoughts returned quickly yesterday to the Capital Gazette in Annapolis Maryland. Rob Hiaasen, Gerald Fischman, Wendi Winters, John McNamara and Rebecca Smith were senselessly murdered in their newsroom on June 28, 2018 by a man who didn’t like the reporting the paper had done on him and his harassment conviction. He’s pleaded guilty. I won’t type his name. I will say that in the immediate days following the shooting we hired armed guards at the MassLive offices in Springfield and Worcester. We instituted security procedures around guest access to our offices and held active shooter meetings with our staff. This happened in newsrooms and media offices throughout America. And it happened with an urgency and anxiety because the President of the United States of America, our President, said the media was an enemy of the people. He didn’t like most of the reporting done on him, that pervasive, annoying tendency we have of reporting facts, so he called us “fake” and “the enemy”.

Did the evil lunatic in Annapolis wear a MAGA hat while barricading an exit, lighting a smoke bomb, and shooting people at their desks? No, but do reasonably intelligent people need to see that to correlate that the leader of the free world can incite crazies with his own crazy rhetoric?

The Capital Gazette hasn’t forgotten. Hasn’t forgotten their colleagues, their families and their work, the importance of their work. This is their pinned tweet since those days: https://www.capitalgazette.com/opinion/our-say/ac-ce-our-say-20180630-story.html

We shouldn’t forget either.