Once upon a time, I was a
reporter. I was never very proud of my reporting skills -- I simply didn't have a real
nose for
news, I couldn't get used to the idea that I was allowed to ask hard, probing
questions, and no matter how hot the story, all I ever really wanted to do was go home and do something else.
April 19, 1995 was one of the few times that I felt proud of my skills as a reporter.
I was working as the
news director and sole reporter for a little
radio station in
Breckenridge, Texas. I got into work on that fine April morning expecting to record a few news
broadcasts, spin some records, suffer through some
mismanagement from
management, and not much more. I checked our "news wire" (I don't remember what wire service we used, but management used them because they were cheap, and I hated them for the same reason) and noted a couple of references to a
bomb blowing up at a
federal building in
Oklahoma City. Big deal. Some dork left a
pipe bomb on the steps and they stick it on the wire? Please. But they kept sending more and more
updates so, wondering if this were a real news story instead of the usual crap we got on the wire, I switched on the little TV in the studio and learned the full story...
Now I wasn't silly enough to try to actually
report on this -- CNN was doing fine and didn't need a little country reporter's assistance. The most I did was mention whatever new
information there was between every couple of songs, just in case any of our local
farmers or
oilfield workers was stuck listening to us instead of watching the tube.
You may not remember, but very soon after
coverage of the bombing began, it became very clear that the anchors at every station were assuming that
Muslim extremists were behind the bombing. Not an unexpected
assumption, considering the circumstances, but I'd been taught that a reporter must not assume too much. Besides, I thought, why would a bunch of
Iraqis bomb a building in Oklahoma City instead of one in New York or Washington or L.A.? It made no sense. So I bucked the trend and told my tiny number of listeners that
no one had any solid information about who was responsible. I believe I was one of a very, very small number of reporters who didn't jump to the conclusion that all terrorists were of Middle Eastern descent. I did not contribute to the atmosphere of
mistrust,
paranoia, and
xenophobia that followed.
Then I got fired, but I don't think the two were connected.