Annapolis is Everywhere!

Annapolis, Maryland. A small city on the shores of Chesapeake Bay In many ways, it is just one of your typical small American cities, and apart from the US Naval Academy located there, has little to set it apart from myriads of similarly sized cities between the Eastern Seaboard and the Pacific Ocean. Yet, on June 28th, 2018, this city was suddenly and horribly thrown into the harsh, unblinking stare of global publicity, when a lone gunman entered the offices of Capitol Gazette Communications, publisher of the local daily newspaper The Capitol, and began opening fire on the journalists, killing five of them in the process. The gunman was later arrested.

It now appears that the attacker, Jarred Warren Ramos, was motivated by personal reasons, namely supposed “defamation” by The Capitol with regards to his guilty plea in a criminal harassment case in 2011. Following the initial report, he had bombarded the company with a plethora of threats, and repeated lawsuits, all of which had been summarily dismissed as baseless. Why this sustained abusive behaviour wasn’t addressed by the local police department is something that will have to be determined by authorities that are more competent than me, and is also beside the point of this article.

It should however be noted that this attack is not an isolated incident, and it isn’t taking place in a vacuum. For years now, journalists have increasingly become targets of intimidation and downright violence. This worrying trend is clearly observable in the World Press Freedom Index, published annually by Reporters without Borders, which clearly records this downward trend, with the supposed “Land of the Free” only managing a meagre 45th place in the 2018 ranking. Even Europe, which often holds itself up as a liberal bastion, is far from safe in this regard. The assassinations of journalist and blogger Daphne Caruana Galizia in Malta in October 2017, and of investigative journalist Ján Kuciak in his home outside Bratislava in February 2018 attest to this sad fact.

This escalation in violence has been matched in recent years by a ratcheting up in hostile rhetoric by politicians and activists who, it must be said, mostly hail from the right end of the political spectrum. The most glaring example of this is of course the current occupant of the White House, Donald Trump. Both during his campaign, and later during his presidency, he has consistently railed against the media, calling journalists “enemies of the people”, routinely referring to their reports as “fake news” even in the face of obvious facts, and during one campaign rally encouraging the use of force against reporters by armed supporters. 

Once again, Europe isn’t faring much better. In Germany, currently ranking at 15 in the World Press Freedom Index, supporters of the right wing AfD party as well as the xenophobic Pegida movement (Yep, those creeps are still around as well), routinely threaten or outright attack journalists attempting to cover rallies or demonstrations, while leading figures in the party go out of their way to demonize journalists. The situation in other central and eastern European countries is far worse. In Slovakia, former president Robert Fico waged a vicious campaign against journalists, bombarding them with lawsuits, calling them “hyenas” and “dirty anti Slovak prostitutes”. Even after the assassination of Ján Kuciak, who had been investigating corruption and mafia entaglement within Fico’s inner circle, he continued his vicious assaults.

Robert Fico was a bit of an anomaly, as he was one of the few eastern European heads of state who did not belong to a right-wing or far right party. However, his rhetoric fits right in with that of Viktor Órban in Hungary, The PiS puppet government in Poland, or Miloš Zeman in the Czech Republic. The latter famously brought a replica AK-47 marked with the name of a journalist to a press conference, and repeatedly called for journalists to be lynched. In fairness though, Zeman, was an asshole even when I was living in Prague back in the early 1990s, so at least he‘s consistent, if nothing else.

It is this background choir of hostility and threats that emboldens the more vile elements of society to go beyond simply intimidating journalists, and flat out incite violence against them. Such is the case with Milo Yiannopoulos, a far right extremist blogger,  social media personality and all-round bastard over in the US. In the days immediately preceding the attack, he had called upon vigilantes to start attacking journalists and media professionals, and is standing behind his words. 

But you don‘t need to be a neo-nazi scumbag like Milo to enage in this kind of rhetoric. Over the last few days two members of what could be called the “liberal establishment” have waded into this debate as well. One of these people was Leo Varadkar of all people, the poster child of a modern, increasingly secular Ireland. During a recent visit to New York to kick off Ireland’s campaign for a seat on the UN Security Council, he stated that one of the few things he could sympathise with the US president about was his views and criticism of the media. Just to reiterate, this is the same president who attacks, insults, and belittles journalists, and who has encouraged his armed supporters to “take care” of journalists. I get that the Irish media can get a bit tiresome, but there is NO excusing this type of behaviour. That sentence alone has disqualified Mr. Varadkar from any further political office in my eyes.

And then, there’s Axel Voss. The 55 year old German is a Member of the European Parliament for the conservative European People’s Party. In 2017, he was appointed as the rapporteur for the European Parliament in regards to a European Copyright reform, the now infamous Article 13. Following the publication of his report, he was faced with an intense outcry by civil rights activists, research institutions, internet companies, and even parts of the very same media that were supposed to benefit from these reforms. The criticism by these groups and people was hard hitting and factual, however instead of addressing these concerns, he started accusing them of lying and “spreading fake news”. Now where have I heard that before? I’ll write an article about the whole Article 13 debacle as soon as I’ve gotten my gag reflex under control, but it is truly a shop of horrors that has serious potential to destroy the internet as we know it.

If all this sounds terrifying to you, that’s because it is. The modern press landscape is by no means perfect, I personal rail against German tabloid Bild and its parent company Axel Springer on a regular basis. However, even with its imperfections, the modern press is the best and most independent check & balance we have against out of control government in a modern democratic society, our last line of defence against the contagion of authoritarianism that appears to be spreading around the world like a pandemic. This makes a free press more important than ever before.

That is why it’s important that we ourselves do not become part of this contagion. Going about this is as easy as it is hard. We need to temper our emotions when confronted with a news story that does not fit into our own neat ideological bubble. The ongoing cycle of outrage at pretty much every article that is even the slightest bit controversial is a huge part of the problem, and provides the fertilizer on which individuals like Trump, Yiannopoulos, Órban, Fico, or Zeman thrive. I know this isn’t easy. Hell, I sometimes have problems keeping a cool head myself. Yet, it is vital that we break this cycle of outrage, and start engaging on a more intellectual level if we ever want to progress as a society.

Part of this intellectual reaction must be an instinctive distrust of those who decry journalism as “fake news”, and those who denounce journalists as “enemies of the people” or “traitors”. Journalists have in the past been crucial in uncovering some of the most egregious abuses of power in the 20th century. There’s a direct line from the Pentagon Papers via Watergate and Project Jennifer to Wikileaks, the Snowden revelations, and the Panama Papers. Those who attempt to undermine this vital work usually have quite a lot to lose from independent journalism and therefore have ulterior motives in attempting to stop it. The more we recognise this simple pattern, the better a chance we have at stopping it. 

All this is not a one-way street. Many journalists an publishers still haven’t understood that they’re not the only show in town anymore, and haven’t been so for more than a decade. The rise of platforms such as YouTube, Blogger.com, on which this very blog is hosted, or Wordpress, have enabled everyone with a semi decent computer to publish their own stories, their own points of view, points of view that are often at odds with that of big publishers or even journalists themselves. In a time when even large, financially sound newspapers and media organisations have to scale down their operations, this new generation of freelance content producers would be an ideal solution to keep an eye on local developments. Instead, bloggers, Youtubers, etc. are shunned and discredited at every opportunity, not because of their point of view, or any sloppy research, but simply because of their choice of platform. This goes so far that press & journalist’s associations all over Europe are going so far as to explicitly exclude any bloggers or YouTubers from their ranks, and therefore denying them access to the legal protections enjoyed by classical journalists. In a world where seemingly everyone has either a lawyer or the police on speed dial, this is a major factor. 

Don’t get me wrong, on an emotional level, this “circling the wagons” mentality is understandable. It is a natural reflex for any group of people to close ranks when threatened. However, this behaviour also serves to further alienate journalists not just from bloggers and other independent media operators, but also from their readers and the general public. It is this disconnect, this divide, that populists, autocrats, and despots prey on to further their own causes, and it should be in the interest of journalists and the general public alike to deny these people any chance of success. 

The attack in Annapolis is a shocking atrocity, and will leave a large and indelible wound in the local community. However, it is more than just a local event. It is a warning shot, a symptom of a much larger problem, and potentially a harbinger of things to come. Personal motives or not, the freedom of the press, a vital component of our liberal society, is under threat, and it is upon each and every one of us to combat this threat. There’s quite simply too much at stake for us to stand idly by. Rome is burning. Time to put away the fiddle and get active!