Olivia Heersink | Argonaut
Coming into college, I had a set educational path I planned to embark down — medicine.
However, I quickly realized a life of lab coats and stethoscopes wasn’t for me. I set that dream aside and began to search for another.
It took me a bit, but eventually I found journalism. I had always loved to write; I just didn’t think I could make a career out of it.
After the first week of a media writing course, I was hooked, and I later wondered how I ever considered doing anything else.
As I grew to love the industry more with each new story, it seemed the general public began to feel the opposite, spouting claims of “fake news” and bias.
Those inciting hate against journalists were spurned on further by President Donald Trump, who has made it his goal to demonize the one institution he can’t buy off.
Soon, verbal accusations weren’t enough anymore. Words became articulated with fists rather than mouths, and on June 28, those punches morphed into bullets.
Last Thursday, a 38-year-old man opened fire on a newsroom in Annapolis, Maryland, killing five and injuring several others.
Jarrod Warren Ramos, the suspected shooter, had a personal vendetta against the Capital Gazette, swearing to kill one of the newspaper’s reporters, according to the Baltimore Sun.
He had been sued for harassment by a woman he stalked and accosted online through social media, which the Gazette then wrote a story on.
Ramos sued the paper for defamation in 2012, but ultimately lost in court after a judge determined his case had no merit.
His anger festered as time went on, leading him to allegedly attack a room full of innocent people, whose only transgression was reporting the truth.
When did it become a crime to report the facts, and at what point did it become something people had to die for?
The cost of freedom should never be that high. Those lost in Annapolis deserved far better.
Journalists are not “the enemy of the people,” as Trump would have most of his followers believe.
We are your neighbors, friends and family. There is no ulterior motive in truth telling.
People become reporters because they truly love what they do. If they didn’t, they would choose a career with more stable hours and a larger paycheck.
I chose this path because it offered me the chance to do something important while furthering a passion for something I sincerely adore, even on the worst of days.
The entire point of the press is to uphold the very pillars the United States was founded on by keeping the institutions responsible for governing this nation accountable.
Democracy cannot thrive in darkness or silence, and that’s where the U.S. will end up if people don’t start having more respect for the fourth estate. The media truly is the lifeblood of a democratic country.
Thomas Jefferson once said, “Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.”
Although over two centuries old, Jefferson’s sentiment could not ring any truer than it does today.
One cannot be free if they have no understanding of what’s going on and without the press, we are doomed to wallow in ignorance because no one will be there to shine a light in the inevitable darkness.
Olivia Heersink can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @heersinkolivia