The following guest column by Brad Fuqoa, editor of the Philomath Express, ran Sept. 2 in the Corvallis Gazette-Times :
Last week’s tragic killing of television reporter Alison Parker and cameraman Adam Ward in Virginia shook up a lot of us in the journalism community. The man responsible for the murders turned out to be a former disgruntled employee who obviously had mental health issues.
Journalists understand the risks involved with the job when stories take you to places like Iraq at the height of the war or to New Orleans during a nasty hurricane. But not when you’re interviewing a chamber of commerce’s executive director at a mall on the topic of tourism.
This awful tragedy led me to recall an incident early in my career as a sports writer in Nebraska. I worked at a 25,000-circulation daily that had 50 high schools in its coverage area and my primary beat was high school football. I’ve been trying to remember over the past few days as to why a parent attacked me, but I just can’t recall what I had done or written to send him over the edge.
Nevertheless, following a Grand Island Senior High football game one Friday night, I was walking through the middle of the field alongside coaches when a man started yelling obscenities at me. I can’t remember if I responded or not (this was 26 years ago), but the confrontation then turned physical as he shoved me from behind.
Right at that moment when I turned around to confront him, an assistant football coach who noticed what was going on took the guy out by grabbing him and throwing him to the ground.
Needing to make sure I completed my interviews before writing on deadline, I chuckled to myself, thanked the assistant coach and went on with my work.
But the incident had an impact on me. Receiving threatening letters from anonymous people was not real uncommon – at least back in those days (now people just vent online). I started to wonder if I was going to get attacked at my car in a dark parking lot some evening.
I had my fishing gear in the trunk and I actually kept my knife up front with me in the car in case some maniac suddenly appeared. After a few weeks, I thought it was silly and stored the knife back in my tackle box.
A few years after that in the early 1990s, I worked as a front-page copy editor at the Bismarck Tribune in North Dakota. One night after getting off work, a co-worker and I stopped at one of the popular bars in downtown Bismarck for a beer. An older man at the bar overheard some shop talk and decided to share his opinions on how much he thought the newspaper was a joke.
One thing led to another and sure enough, a physical confrontation started to develop. My friend calmed me down and we decided to walk away amid his taunts to avoid something we might later regret.
That was more than 20 years ago and I haven’t had any of those types of incidents occur since, none that come to mind anyway. Perhaps the difference is that I was sort of young and cocky back in those days and didn’t have a problem sharing my opinion. Today, I’m simply more mature, have learned from my mistakes and try to keep my retaliatory emotions in check.
There have been a few verbal confrontations over the years when certain situations arise that can’t be avoided. In general, the two most problematic groups I've experienced are parents at sporting events (and not really high school, but parents of younger kids) and people who have appeared in the police log.
I've come up with two solutions to avoid those possible moments of conflict.
First, I give only limited coverage to sports involving young children. For the most part, I don’t write stories from a competitive angle (which means, actually covering the game with descriptions of how a game unfolded). For example, we had youth baseball and softball teams with great summers and I interviewed coaches and wrote stories about their accomplishments.
But I don’t want to write about a 9-year-old pitcher that gave up 12 runs in one inning or the 10-year-old softball player who made an error that lost the game. And yes, I’m one of those people that believes the Little Leaguers shouldn’t be on national television. They’re just kids.
The other solution is very simple and that is to just stay out of bars late at night in the community I cover for the newspaper. When the alcohol flows, people react in different ways and it’s not always positive. I’ll either get a hug or a punch in the face. I’m more likely to run into someone who’s angry with me about being in the police log in a bar late at night versus a diner in the middle of the day.
The deaths of the TV journalists involved an entirely different situation and what I’m writing about from my own experiences does not compare in any way.
I’ve never been in a life-threatening situation and besides, these two people were killed by a former co-worker. When employees are fired, violence does sometimes occur. The big difference here, obviously, was that it occurred on camera during live TV.
(Brad Fuqua is editor of the Philomath Express. He can be reached at brad.fuqua@philomathexpress.com).
Commented