This article originally published by the Committee to Protect Journalists.
The Capital Gazette shootings in Annapolis in June, in which a gunman killed five staff, forced many newsrooms across the U.S. to reassess the security of their offices. While journalists acknowledged that threats come with the job, the shooting comes in a year of increased hostility toward the press, including pipe bombs being sent care of CNN’s New York City studio in October and threatening calls and messages sent to the Boston Globe in August.
Since the start of the year, CPJ has tracked over 20 incidents including three intruders entering studios; 15 cases of threatening letters or calls, four of which resulted in arrests; and six attacks including a man ramming his truck into the station of a Fox affiliate in Texas and an unidentified person firing multiple shotsat mail carriers for The Lewiston Tribune in Idaho.
CPJ spoke with three journalists and a newsroom security expert about how attacks and threats have affected their approach to work.