Lexington police believe that windows shattered at the office of the Lexington Herald-Leader resulted from small-caliber gunfire. Publisher Rufus Friday said it was “concerning,” given the animosity expressed toward journalists in the U.S. and Lexington recently. (Lexington Herald-Leader, May 29, 2017, by Herald-Leader Staff)
The attack follows the publication of a story about the Kentucky governor’s attack on a Courier-Journal reporter, calling him a “sick man” for his coverage of sweetheart deal the governor made on a mansion he recently purchased. Gersh Kuntzman of the New York Daily News, May 30, 2017, noted the irony of politicians emerging unscathed for inciting violence against journalists when the journalists are reporting on the politicians’ malfeasance or incompetence. “This is the world we now live in,” wrote Kuntzman, “where gun-toting yahoos think they can fire into newsrooms hours after the governor of Kentucky says journalists are ‘sick’ people. Or GOP candidates for the House can beat up reporters. It’s not hard to see how we got here: The President derides reporters all the time, including paraphrasing the repressive Soviet regime when he calls reporters ‘the enemy of the people.'”
Shelley Hepworth of the Columbian Journalism Review, May 25, 2017, is chronicling the Trump-era assault on norms governing the press in America. He says the press operates under “well-established norms, rather than legal rules.” So the troubling assault on these norms erodes press freedom essential to a healthy democracy.