Lori Falce: Troubling trend in journalism
Aug. 18—People have an idea in their heads about what it is like to work for a newspaper.
It's an idea that, like many things, is shaped by movies and television. Editors bark orders and chew cigars like the Daily Bugle's J. Jonah Jameson. Reporters flock on the steps of every courthouse, shouting questions like a cacophony of seagull cries. They will do anything to get a good story, like that guy you hated in "Die Hard."
But much like the criminal court system is quite different from "Law & Order," the depiction of journalism is often at best outdated and at worst, well, just wrong.
I almost never bark and don't even chew gum, let alone cigars. It isn't that we don't have reporters at major events, but those gaggles are less common than mining public records or making endless phone calls. We are well aware of the lines we can't cross.
The biggest difference is that Hollywood shows you a fantasy version of Big City Journalism. The vast majority of journalists do not work for an outlet that large. My first paper had a circulation of about 8,000 or so. We covered two counties peppered with tiny municipalities. I have sat in a lot of meetings in a township garage.
Those meetings are not less important than ones in Pittsburgh or Philadelphia or Washington. They're just smaller, which means fewer people are paying attention. In some ways, that makes keeping track of what happens there all the more important.
That's why what happened at the Marion County Record in Kansas important. It isn't just that a raid was conducted at a newspaper. It isn't even the fact that co-owner Joan Meyer, 98, died the next day, with her son — publisher and co-owner Eric Meyer — attributing it to the stress of the incident.
If the raid was legitimately due to belief that a crime took place, that would be unfortunate but necessary. Warrants are regularly served at the businesses and workplaces of the accused, from car dealerships to restaurants to law offices. No one is above the law, regardless of First Amendment protections.
But the thread of this story seems to be more of retaliation for a story the Record was investigating about a DUI charge and a restaurant owner applying for a liquor license. Ultimately, the paper opted not to run the piece but did write about it when the restaurant owner, Kari Newell, confirmed it at a public meeting.
Newell is the victim listed in the application for the warrant. Being the subject of journalism is not victimization, especially when the story is one's own behavior and told in one's own words.
It is part of a troubling trend.
The 2018 Capital Gazette shooting in Annapolis, Md., killed five. In September 2022, Las Vegas reporter Jeff German was stabbed outside his home, with police charging a public official with the crime. In April, officials in an Oklahoma county were recorded discussing hit men in regards to the McCurtain Gazette-News publisher Bruce Willingham and his reporter son Chris Willingham.
Journalism serves the public, opening doors and shining light into the dark corners so that people can have faith in good leaders and fix problems with those who do not deserve that faith.
It is tragic that people have succumbed to a drumbeat that calls journalists the enemy of the people. It is worse that it is so often seen as permissible to take such a suspense-movie response to them.
Lori Falce is a Tribune-Review community engagement editor. You can contact Lori at lfalce@triblive.com.
