LENOIR, N.C. – In my 50-plus years of reporting, I’ve been threatened more times than I can remember. But I’ve never been given a ticket for asking too many questions. I don’t have a box big enough to hold the citations. Plus, I’d tell the issuing agency to put it where the sun doesn’t shine.

Yet, that’s exactly what happened to a reporter in Illinois this week. As unbelievable as it is, here is the headline from the Associated Press: Illinois city tickets reporter for asking too many questions, in latest First Amendment dustup.

It seems officials in Calumet City, Ill. became annoyed with a Hank Sanders, a reporter for the Daily Southtown. His “crime”?  According to the city, he is charged with “interference/hampering of city employees.”

In other words, doing his job. I’d find this laughable if it wasn’t so dangerous. First, I suspect there are many extremists on both ends of our political spectrum that wish reporters would just shut up. Indeed, I was at an event one time and kept asking questions because the person in authority simply wouldn’t answer them. Finally, from somewhere in the back, came this scream, “I wish he’d just shut up.”

I didn’t and have not yet. There are too many assaults upon reporters and the press to stop. An Alabama reporter was arrested following his coverage of a grand jury investigation of the school district on his beat. And, in the most startling recent development, police in Kansas raided a newspaper, stole phones and equipment and caused the death of the newspaper’s matriarch by heart attack just a couple years short of her 100^th birthday. As he should have, the police chief resigned. But that is not enough. Violating the sacred oath of office to obey the Constitution should lead to his imprisonment.

Why? The Kansas event – and the others – are clear attempts to unlawfully intimidate journalists. That is unacceptable.

Let us begin together an earnest search for those who wish to be citizen journalists so that we can pepper the people we elect – and their functionaries that serve us – with so many questions that they won’t know who to arrest first.

Such harassment is all too common. Sometimes it is blatant, sometimes subtle. I’ll provide some examples. In 1972, I was invited to find a new school by the nuns running Notre Dame High School because of an unflattering, but truthful article I wrote about their hypocrisy and cruelty in the school newspaper. That is how I ended up graduating from Washington Irving High School in Clarksburg in 1974.

Then in the mid 1990s, after I had turned to journalism full time, I was working at the local (then) daily in Lenoir, N.C. A large food distributor had plans to build a huge distribution complex in a neighborhood in the south end of our county. I got wind of it, learned what I could and wrote the story. The publisher spiked it, saying, “That’s bad for business.” Now, anytime I’m told something is bad for business, my interior translator hears, “We can’t let the public know about this. They’ll be outraged.”

And they were. First, because there was nothing to keep me from telling every person I knew in the neighborhood about the plans. Second, because the “Honorables” at the county and state levels were able to keep it under wraps until the deal was done. But once it was done, the public cared because the construction site not only hindered safe travel through the neighborhood, but blasting was cracking the foundations of homes.

I called the company and naturally, they denied it. The denial didn’t matter, as one of my sources in the neighborhood called to let me know they were setting up seismographs to measure the impacts of the explosions. I asked our photographer to join me and we went and found a couple of workers setting up a station along a county road. We got out of the car, identified ourselves and I asked them what they were doing. There was a woman and man. The man came up to within inches of me and told me it was none of my business and to leave. I explained to him that we were standing on a public road and would be taking pictures. I asked again for comment. This time, he simply threatened me physical harm. I just kept taking notes and our photographer kept snapping photos while the worker’s partner persuaded him to stand down.

The story and photo we got was worth the wait. It pointed to the underhanded secrecy of the deal and the inherent bullying that goes with such backroom shenanigans.

Education was also on my beat at that newspaper. The local public school system was found by us to be in violation of the North Carolina Public Records and Open Meeting laws. Repeatedly. It got to be so common that I eventually typed up a standard lede for these violations. Though I wrote such a lede well over a dozen times, not once did anyone in the school system deny the facts. Once, two school board members marched into our editor’s office and demanded he deliver my head to them. He showed them the door. However, the superintendent quit talking to me and even attempted to slip out the back door a couple of times when he learned I was in the Education Center building. Eventually, over a lunch he quite reluctantly agreed to, I shared with him that our objectives were the same: making sure we had the best public school system in the state. Our relationship, unfortunately because of the School Board’s tendency to be secretive, was less than desirable. We heard each other out and I reminded him that the newspaper had no intention of quitting “buying paper by the roll and ink by the barrel.” Transparency improved. In the end, we parted as friendly, if not friends.

Fast forward to Big Isaac, W.Va. In 2015, the land around this small farming community in northern West Virginia was being destroyed by the construction of the Stonewall Gas Gathering Pipeline. The McClain family, owners of a farm, complained about the damage to their property caused by improper flood control by Precision Pipeline. I investigated. While standing – again on a public county road – taking notes and photographs of the destruction, a company boss came up to me. He entered into by personal space and actually touched shoulders with me, I suppose to remind me that he was a “bigger” man than me. He turned to me and said, “It’s a beautiful sight, isn’t it?” I answered, “It depends upon what you value.”

Finally, this year, I attempted to find out from our local hospital – owned by UNC Health Care – why they had stopped delivering babies in a county with 80,000 residents. They have simply refused to answer believing their silence will make the story go away. They are wrong. I’ve lost count of the people that have commented on the story and its importance. Many immediately point out all the revenue that is being lost to the businesses close to the hospital. Indeed, as our family had to travel to neighboring Burke County, where babies are still delivered, we found numerous restaurants and other businesses we now frequent. You can read the series articles here, here, here and here. Hospital officials may think silence will protect them; they are wrong. It has exposed them for cowardly avoidance of the most basic responsibility of a community nonprofit – transparency.

And that is why I shall continue to write, despite the threats and avoidance.

A Call to Action

In response to this rising threat to keep them in the dark, citizens must respond. Let us begin together an earnest search for those who wish to be citizen journalists so that we can pepper the people we elect – and their functionaries that serve us – with so many questions that they won’t know who to arrest first. I’ve got a whole list of questions that need answered by political, business, church and community leaders. If we allow them to escape responsibility for answering legitimate questions through intimidation, our silent compliance will be our undoing.

© Michael M. Barrick, 2023. All photos from Unsplash.