Steep price to pay for doing a job

We are not soldiers. We don?t go overseas to fight for our country. Perhaps some of us did at one time, but now, we?re reporters, photographers and cameramen.Our jobs are different, and some might even say they?re intrusive and invasive. We?re not unlike a lot of necessary evils in today?s world. You might not like us most of the time. You might question how we do our jobs – our motives, our competence and our biases. But almost everyone has a go-to news source of one variety or another.Some of us have gone overseas to report on wars and not come back alive. Some of us have been used as propaganda tools by terrorist organizations and then killed in a most gruesome manner.But to think that you?re risking a life sending a reporter and a cameraman to a shopping mall to do a feature story? To think of yourself as being at risk for reporting on such a feature? That is more than just a little sobering.Last month, there was an incident up in the Highlands of Lynn where a suspect allegedly tried to run down a police officer with his car. He was subsequently shot. We sent a reporter and intern and a photographer over there without even thinking twice. And they went, without even thinking twice.I can remember back in 1978, when I was just starting out, five people were found murdered in the basement of Blackfriars Lounge in Boston. My editor looked at me and said, “Krause, get down there.”I went. Without thinking twice. In fact, the adrenaline was bubbling over I was so excited to be covering the crime.If there?s a fire, we go. If there?s a crime that demands coverage, we go. We have no idea whether there?s a suspect who may be doubling back to the scene of the crime to do more damage. We don?t even think about it. We go.What happened Wednesday in Virginia where reporter Alison Parker and cameraman Adam Ward from TV station WDBJ7 out of Roanoke were killed while reporting on a story at Bridgewater Plaza in Moneta, is, of course, horrible. And the fact that the suspect is a former employee who was known to be disgruntled neither adds nor detracts from the horror.The horror of this isn?t that the two worked for a TV station, or were even reporters. The horror is that they were two people, certainly not special in the big picture of things, who were merely doing their jobs. They weren?t covering a crime, or uncovering layers of political muck. They weren?t sticking their cameras into the faces of bereaved people, or trying to catch some public official in an embarrassing or compromising position.They were doing what most early-morning TV news people do: trying to put a smile on the faces of viewers who have to get up and go to work at that hour of the morning.And now they?re dead.It is after events such as this one that we do most of our serious introspection. We come to grips with the fact that in one way or another, we all have jobs that expose us to danger we can never imagine until it comes upon us.The fact that they were reporters hits close to the bone here, because that?s what we do for a living. And it also proves, tragically, that you don?t have to necessarily put yourself in danger to be in danger.We see so much senselessness in the world that, after a while, we become desensitized to a lot of it. It?s only when the carnage becomes too big to ignore that it actually resonates now. That is perhaps the saddest truth of all, because it seems that the ante goes up all the time.Prayers go out to Alison Parker and Adam Ward, and their families and friends. But they also go out to all people who, willingly or unknowingly, put themselves in harm?s way daily simply because they go out every day and do their jobs.