03/03/2017

George Rodrigue on introducing the enemies of the American people

By George Rodrigue, The Plain Dealer

"Know your enemy" is a bit of wisdom that dates back to the 5th century B.C. President Trump has tweeted that journalists are "the enemy of the American People!" So, how can the American people better know their enemies?

Just down the street from the White House, at 555 Pennsylvania Avenue, The Newseum displays a list of more than 2,000 of them, stretching back more than a century.

Don Mellett is listed there. He worked for the now-defunct Canton Daily News. He had exposed police collusion with bootlegging, gambling, and prostitution. This helped clean up Canton, but it displeased some powerful people. A police detective was among the men who shot him dead on July 16, 1926. He was 34.

Walter Liggett is there. As publisher of the Midwest American, he had campaigned against vice and gambling in Minnesota. That may not have made him an enemy of all the people, but it certainly made him an enemy of some of them. He died on Dec. 9, 1935, when two men shot him, in front of his wife and his daughter. He was 49.

Ernie Pyle is there, shot dead by a Japanese machine gunner on April 18, 1945, while  bearing witness to the G.I.s' struggle to capture the island of Ie Shima. He was 45.

Marguerite Higgins was 45, too. She died a quiet death, on Jan. 3, 1966. She had covered World War II, the Korean War, then the war in Vietnam, where she visited hundreds of villages. Either there, or in Pakistan or in India, she came down with leishmaniasis, which killed her. Although she was an enemy of the people, she is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

Don Bolles is there. As a reporter for The Arizona Republic, he had been investigating fraudulent land deals involving leading state politicians. On June 13, 1976, he went to meet a source at a Phoenix hotel. The source never showed. As Bolles started his car to leave, a bomb planted beneath the driver's seat tore off both his legs and his right arm. He died after whispering "Mafia." Dozens of other enemies of the people converged to continue his investigation. Eventually, their work produced 18 indictments. He was 47.

Kurt Schork is there. Although he was an enemy of the people, he was one of the bravest people I've ever known. We met in Sarajevo. Kurt also covered human suffering in Afghanistan, Chechnya, Kosovo, Kurdistan, Sri Lanka and East Timor. He was reporting for Reuters from Sierra Leone on May 24, 2000, when gunmen in that civil war shot him dead. He was 53.

William Biggart is there. He ran to cover the World Trade Center after hearing the first explosion on Sept. 11, 2001. His wife called his cell phone to tell him it was a terrorist attack. "I'm OK," he said. "I'm with the firemen." Four days later, they found his body in the rubble. He was 54.

Robert Friedman is there. He had been attacked by militant Israeli settlers for writing unflattering things about Meir Kahane. He'd also written about the Muslim extremists who bombed the World Trade Center in 1993, and he'd received death threats from the Russian Mafia for what he wrote about them. But he, too, died a quiet death. He had covered female slavery in the slums of Bombay. Seven years later, on July 9, 2002, a tropical disease he had caught in India stopped his heart. He was 51. 

Elizabeth Neuffer is there. We worked in Bosnia together, and covered the first Gulf War and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Once, after going for at least a week without a shower, she begged me to grab a bucket and help wash her hair. She had been arrested, and robbed, and threatened with everything from rape to murder. Sometimes she was scared, but she persisted. She was working for The Boston Globe when she went to Iraq. On May 9, 2003, she died when her car ran off the road near Samarra. She was 46.

Chauncey Bailey is there. He was the editor of the Oakland Post, and he'd been working on stories about financial and criminal questions involving a business called Your Black Muslim Bakery. He was on his way to work one day in 2007 when a young man who worked at the bakery shot and killed him. He was 57.

Anthony Shadid is there, too. He was born in Oklahoma, and went on to work for the AP, The Washington Post and The New York Times. He was shot once, in the shoulder, by an Israeli sniper. That was in 2002. Ten years later, he was covering the opposition to the Assad regime in Syria when he suffered an asthma attack. He died on February 16, 2012. He was 43.

That is just a tiny sample of the enemies of the people honored by the Newseum because they died on the job.

Here at The Plain Dealer, our newsroom contains dozens of enemies of the people. Most are from Cleveland. Many were born here, and so were their parents, and so were their children. Some could earn more money as police officers, or teachers. Some would have better hours if they clerked at a convenience store.

I have seen them work through the deaths of parents, through illness, even through cancer. I'm pretty sure one wanted so badly to contribute to our election-night coverage that she delayed her surgery for a brain tumor. 

Although they are enemies of the people, I have never known them to deliberately make an error, or to hide one. I know they have biases, because they are human. We make mistakes; we correct them, and try not to err again. From everything I have ever seen, they want only to find the truth and tell it.

The nation's founders realized that journalists who told the truth would sometimes anger politicians, and perhaps even be put on enemies lists. They also knew that an attack on the press is an attack on an informed public. That's why the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects freedom of speech, assembly, religion, and the press -- not for journalists, but for the people.