The June 28 shooting at the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Md., that claimed five lives, has shined a spotlight on the hostile environment journalists now find themselves in. The incident touches very close to home for all of us in the media industry who struggle daily with claims of “fake news” or “alternative facts.” United States President Donald Trump, though not directly responsible for the attack, has created an atmosphere of us against them in his anti-press rhetoric. Multiple news outlets quote Trump as repeatedly referring to the media as an “enemy of the people.” Although Jarrod Ramos, the man accused of the shooting who is now charged with five counts of murder, had a well-documented history of harassing the paper, comments like Trump’s and his supporters surely didn’t discourage him. A mere day before the shooting, Milo Yiannopoulos, a longtime Trump supporter, is reported as saying he could not “wait for the vigilante squads to start gunning journalists down on sight.” Words have lasting impacts and when people in the public eye and in positions of power spout this kind of hate, it is only a matter of time before that rhetoric seeps into the public belief systems. We stand with our journalistic peers and pray the vilification of the media stops. The press plays a vital role in democracy and acts as a watchdog for citizens – it’s not hard to see why Trump doesn’t like that.
