Last week was a rough one. It seems like the flags outside the Sun’s office window are at half-staff more often than not these days, and it’s getting hard to keep track of all the death and destruction.
The nation is still reeling from its most devastating mass shooting in Orlando, Fla., at the Pulse Nightclub on June 12, where Omar Mateen gunned down 49 people and wounded 53 others.
And then last week happened.
It’s hard to approach this subject without sounding callous. Shootings. Violence. Death. Our job as journalists is to honestly, but somewhat dispassionately, report facts. “This happened; this is what law enforcement said; this is what we know about the shooter; this is what we know about the victims.”
We’ve done this for years: spoken somewhat clinically about the violence in one community, moving on until the next report of violence breaks.
And last week was a rough one.
Right after July 4 became July 5, Alton Sterling was dead at the hands of two Baton Rouge Police Department officers in Louisiana. Several videos of the shooting were leaked, showing the struggle, the discharge, and the pooling blood on Sterling’s chest as he slipped away.
The very next day, Philando Castile was leaving a county fair with his girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, and her 4-year-old daughter when a St. Anthony, Minn., police officer pulled him over. According to reports, Castile informed the officer that he was in possession of a licensed and concealed weapon as he reached for his identification, which is when he was shot multiple times in the arm.
Castile’s girlfriend Reynolds got a Facebook live stream booted up, and she was the first person to live stream and narrate a death like that on social media.
The deaths of Sterling and Castile—both black—resulted in nationwide marches, vigils, and protests spearheaded by Black Lives Matter. It was at one of these events, in Dallas, Texas, on July 7, that Micah X. Johnson, an Army Reserve Afghan War veteran, opened fire on white police officers, killing five and injuring eight more officers and two civilians.
You can read in our news section this week about how local law enforcement reacted to the tragic attack, including Sheriff Bill Brown, who offered a statement to the Sun on July 8. Brown did say that law enforcement officers are human and make mistakes, reminding us that events like those involving Philando and Sterling only represent a “tiny fraction” of police interaction with citizens.
But Brown didn’t shy from playing the blame game. He cast that blame not too far from my nest, naming “elements of the media” as part of the cause, saying these “elements” made “hasty, irresponsible, and inflammatory editorial comments,” which he believed helped lead to the “Dallas atrocity.”
Micah X. Johnson made no secret about why he did what he did when talking to Dallas officers during a long standoff, before he was killed by a detonation of C-4 explosives by Dallas police. He said it was a direct retaliation for the deaths of Sterling and Castile and that it was racially motivated.
But I wonder, did this gunman—who had allegations of mental health issues from his time serving in the military—read incensed editorials about Castile and Sterling, or did he watch the videos? There are many layers to this onion, which stinks by the way, but are reporters really to blame? Especially when so many people watched these events pan out in practically real-time video feeds.
Again, our job as reporters is just to report facts, and bring them to you unadulterated. It’s bad enough that we have to punch the clock day in and day out, relating horror and mayhem on a deadline, but to then get the blame for it? Well, that stinks, too.
The Canary hates peeling onions. Send her comments at canary@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Jul 14-21, 2016.