To one man these were the faces of fake news
Jarrod Ramos believed a newspaper told lies about him & he made them his enemy
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I wouldn’t insult your intelligence by trying to convince you that the reporters and other newspaper staffers who died yesterday are saintly or are somehow more worthy of your compassion and admiration than anyone else killed in a mass shooting. They aren’t. But just like you, they are members of a community. They have families and friends who loved them. And they went to work each day with the general idea of doing a good job and maybe, just possibly, like some of those you admire at your work, doing the absolute best job they can.
Here’s what they are not. They’re not fake. They’re not serial liars. They’re not pieces of excrement. They’re not disgusting. They’re not evil. They’re not the enemy of the people. And if you think just because they died in a widely publicized mass killing or because they are reporters who cover a local beat these are the “good ones”–not the fake and disgusting ones–you are wrong.
You know who does think reporters purposely lie, give fake news, are disgusting and their enemy? Jarrod Ramos, the man who was arrested yesterday for killing Robert Hiaasen, Gerald Fischman, John McNamara, Rebecca Smith and Wendi Winters.
Am I going out on a limb to believe most of you reading this probably think, as I do, that Ramos was likely delusional and quite crazed for believing the news people who covered his troubled past were the source of the problems in his life? Maybe he thought they were part of a conspiracy to destroy him. Based on what we know right now none of that seems like a stretch, does it?
Through many years Jarrod Ramos built up a narrative about those who work at this one newspaper, the Capital Gazette, that really wasn’t rational. For many years we’ve been seeing a similar narrative building across the U.S. about the news media in general.
I’m not going to tell you Jarrod Ramos was fueled by the growing verbal assaults about the news media, because I don’t know. What I will point out is that the obsession Jarrod Ramos had about one newspaper did not end well. If we can’t get beyond a similar irrational belief that what we get every day from the mainstream news media is fake news from disgusting people, I believe it will not end well for our country.
