Importance of free speech resonates
IN Maryland last week, a man walked into the offices of the Capital Gazette newspaper and opened fire with a shotgun, killing five staff members and wounding two others. It naturally struck a chord in newspaper offices everywhere, including The Oklahoman, because what happened in Annapolis could happen anywhere.
And, in particular because the gunman reportedly had an axe to grind over the newspaper doing its job — it had reported his harassment of a woman he went to school with. The story led him to file a defamation lawsuit against the Capital Gazette in 2012. He lost. And he didn’t forget.
Our reporters write stories all the time that may cast someone in a poor light. This is part of the job. It may be a story from the courthouse about a person on trial, or from the statehouse about legislators who have gotten into trouble or filed questionable bills. Having your name in the paper isn’t always pleasant.
But those sorts of stories, and any number of others, are what result from a free and open press — one that allows reporters to dig into public records to find examples where breakdowns in agency protocol have led to foster children being harmed, or find examples of taxpayer money being wasted, or discover additional information about political candidates, or quiz elected officials about their views on important policy issues.
These are all things reporters at The Oklahoman do every day. They do their jobs professionally and well, with an eye not on winning awards or advancing agendas but on providing readers with the facts through straightforward reporting.
No doubt this is true at the Capital Gazette — as it is in newsrooms of local newspapers from coast to coast. We’re members of our communities. Our work may irritate readers now and then, but our stories, photos and videos also inform and often uplift them.
This is part of what makes frequent criticism of the news media so disappointing. Calling the media the “enemy of the people” or dismissing stories as “fake news” simply because one doesn’t like them has a damaging effect. As John Temple, a former reporter and editor who now teaches at the University of California, Berkley, put it in a blog post, “These people and these organizations are not enemies of the people, as our president so dangerously swears. They are the people.”
The Annapolis gunman killed Rebecca Smith, 34, a sales assistant; Wendi Winters, 65, an editor and community reporter; Robert Hiaasen, 59, a Sunday columnist and assistant editor since 2010; Gerald Fischman, 61, the editorial page editor who had been at the newspaper more than 25 years; and John McNamara, 56, who had worked at the Capital Gazette in various capacities for more than 20 years.
We extend our condolences to the victims’ families and to the Capital Gazette staff which, in a remarkable display of professionalism, managed to put out a paper the next day despite their offices having been turned into a horrific crime scene.
We’ll add, too, that one of the best things about The Oklahoman returning to downtown Oklahoma City in 2015 is that we became more accessible to visitors, whether they’re interview subjects or advertising clients or readers. This awful shooting doesn’t change that, as we work each day to help make this state a better place to live, work and raise a family.