Epidemic of Violence by Media Veterans

Normal citizens are becoming alarmed at the flurry of violence by media veterans:

A Denver newspaper columnist is arrested for stalking a story subject. In Cincinnati, a television reporter is arrested on charges of child molestation. A North Carolina newspaper reporter is arrested for harassing a local woman. A drunken Chicago Sun-Times columnist and editorial board member is arrested for wife beating. A Baltimore newspaper editor is arrested for threatening neighbors with a shotgun. In Florida, one TV reporter is arrested for DUI, while another is charged with carrying a gun into a high school. A Philadelphia news anchorwoman goes on a violent drunken rampage, assaulting a police officer. In England, a newspaper columnist is arrested for killing her elderly aunt.

..."These people could snap at any minute," says James Treacher of the Treacher Institute for Journalist Studies. "We need to get them the help and medication they need before it's too late."...Accounts of media psychopathy, while widespread, have until now been largely anecdotal. In order to provide a more focused and systematic study of the crisis, Iowahawk researchers set out to identify and tabulate criminal arrests and convictions of current and former journalists. While by no means comprehensive, this 10-minute project yielded a grim picture of a once-proud profession now in the grips of tragic, drunk, violent, child-raping rage.

The stories cited in the opening paragraph, while instructive, are by no means isolated. Google searches return hundreds of crimes attributable to workers in America's media industry, and millions of pages containing the terms "journalist" and "murder." They are as shocking in their detail as they are in their number.

....How many unsuspecting American motorists and pedestrians remain at risk from alcoholic media professionals is still a matter of scientific conjecture, but one thing is certain: journalists can be even more deadly outside their cars. Often the journalistic gateway to violent behavior begins with stalking and trespassing -- such as has been alleged of People magazine reporters Jeffrey Neal Weiss, and, in an unrelated incident, Don Sider. But sometimes, as in the case of MSNBC host Keith Olbermann, serial stalking behavior goes unpunished and the perpetrators go on to seek more serious thrill-crimes. Journalists recently charged with violent offenses include New York Times reporter and alleged batterer Michael Katz, British reporter Ben Stubbings, and St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Margaret Gillerman, charged with striking a police officer.

... A shocking number of journalism-related crimes involve child molestation, child pornography, and internet stalking of minors. Journalists recently charged with sickening crimes in this category include Arizona newspaper editor Lindsey Stockton, Arkansas radio reporter Charles "David" Ballard, New Orleans Times-Picayune reporter William Kalec, Former KTTV-TV Los Angeles reporter Rod Bernsen, Washington DC TV weatherman Bill Kamal, and Noel Neff, former editor of the children's magazine Weekly Reader.

In recent times, the national journalist crime spree has taken an increasingly deadly turn. A typical case in point is former Savannah newspaper reporter Donald Lowery, charged with robbing a bank with a sawed-off shotgun. Sometimes arrests are made before bloodshed, such as in the case of Oak Ridge (TN) newspaper reporter and alleged murder plotter Michael Frazier, and former San Francisco AsianWeek columnist Kenneth Eng, arrested for threatening a Virginia Tech-style massacre at a New York University commencement. All too often, though, the warning signs come too late. Recent years witnessed several journalists arrested on murder charges, including longtime Hartford Courant reporter Gregory Robertson and Missouri radio host and reporter James Keown, charged with fatally poisoning his wife by spiking her Gatorade with antifreeze.

...Among the defenders is University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds.

"I think it's unfair to single out journalists as thieves, or violent, or drunks, or child abusers," says Reynolds. "Sometimes they're all of the above."...He cites the case of Kevin Lee Pettiford, a Knoxville journalist charged with abducting and threatening to kill three minor girls during a drunken high speed chase to an attempted bank robbery.

Iowahawk

Truly, the North American public is at serious risk from violent media veterans--the scummiest of the scummy.
;-)