Not all of their deaths have been murders.
Some journalists have died while covering wars. American Michael Kelly in 2003 was killed when a military vehicle he was riding in ran off a Baghdad road after coming under Iraqi fire.
In 2009 Canadian journalist Michelle Lang was killed in Afghanistan after a vehicle she was riding in hit a roadside bomb.
But there are, however, targeted and deliberate killings. In 2016 Mexican crime reporter Anabel Flores Salazar was kidnapped and subsequently murdered, presumably for reporting about crime, the drug cartels and the havoc they bring into the lives of helpless, ordinary communities.
And, of course, most recently John McNamara was one the journalists gunned down at the Capital Gazette in late June.
While it’s still unclear if the suspected gunman was targeting McNamara specifically what is unquestionable is that he deliberately attacked the Laurel, Maryland newspaper.
Hundreds of other journalists—photographers, cameramen, staff writers, freelancers, bloggers—have been killed or injured while or for doing their job: gathering information to share with the public. (There are plenty of others—the lucky ones?—who have only been jailed, threatened with lawsuits, verbally abused, or physically attacked for doing that same job)
They are not heroes.
They are not super humans.
They—like the people who serve in the military, drive a police car, read the news on the subway, or view photographs on a smartphone at lunch—are mothers and fathers and sons and daughters and people who work for a living in an industry that is struggling to find a way to do more than survive. (In that way they resemble the men and women who work in factories and manufacturing and retail and other areas that must find ways to adapt to a changed economy).
Journalists and members of the media are couples who work to pay a mortgage and save money to raise a family, they are 20-and 30-somethings who like to blow off steam after work with friends in and out of the industry, taxpayers who grumble about paying more on what seems like less, and dreamers who imagine all the wonderful things they could do if they won the lotto.
The media, like the medical and legal and law enforcement and banking professions, is filled with people who strive to do a good job and are chagrined when one in their ranks makes a mistake that casts them all in an unflattering light.
The media and journalists are men and women who cover and write stories that may affect the public for better or worse. They write about corruption at a local school district and fund raisers for families overwhelmed by medical bills. They write about kids stuck in caves and saved by heroic people and politicians who want to work solely for the rich and the powerful.
Like everyone else, members of the media are not perfect.
But neither are they the enemy of the American people as President Trump once stated on social media.
