By Randal Seyler | Contributor
Monday, Jan. 22, 2024
Little Rock, Ark. –Imagine you’re sitting at your desk or workstation in your newsroom.
You’re writing a story on deadline, concentrating on the monitor in front of you, when you hear a commotion out in the hallway.
At first you aren’t sure what the loud voices are saying. You try and tune out the boisterous conversation, and start to re-read your last sentence when suddenly a sharp crack – BANG – sounds in the hallway.
There’s a wail, then the succession gunshots and screams begin.
What do you do?
Do you have an escape route? Has your company ever discussed what to do in an active shooter situation? Have you ever seriously considered such a scenario while sitting in your office? Or how about while sitting at a school board meeting, or a city council gathering, or while covering a crime scene investigation?
Chances are you answered no to some, and maybe even all, of the above questions.
Workplace violence can occur in any employment setting, including newsrooms, whether they be at newspapers or television stations.
According to the 2019 report Indicators of Workplace Violence, compiled by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health and released in 2022, nearly 18,000 persons were killed at work, on duty, or in violence that was work-related over a 27-year period from 1992 to 2019.
According to the study, an annual average of 1.3 million nonfatal workplace violent victimizations occurred during the combined 5 years from 2015 to 2019, based on data from BJS’s National Crime Victimization Survey.
In June of 2018 a local resident, unhappy about having his police charges published in the Capital Gazette, a newspaper serving Annapolis, Md., brought a shotgun into the newsroom and killed five people.
The gunman, Jarrod Ramos, was doubly annoyed that his defamation lawsuit against the newspaper was dismissed in court. The paper had published an article in 2011 about Ramos being put on probation for harassing an acquaintance from high school via social media and email.
Allegedly Ramos sent angry letters and threats to the newspaper after the lawsuit was dismissed, but no legal action was taken by the newspaper after the threats were received.
So, on the afternoon of June 28, Ramos showed up with a 12-gauge Mossberg to register his complaint in blood. Five people, including Rob Hiaasen, brother of noted novelist Carl Hiaasen.
In 2021, Ramos was found guilty and sentenced to five life terms plus 345 years in prison.
But since 2018, three other American journalists have been murdered in separate incidents – Aviva Okeson-Haberman in Kansas City, Mo., Jeff German in Las Vegas and Dylan Lyons in Pine Hills, Fla.
Time Magazine reported in 2019 that statistically, the average American has a greater risk of dying from heart disease or cancer than from a firearm, according to the National Safety Council.
Auto accidents also kill about the same number of people in the U.S. as guns do each year, according to CDC statistics.
However, people in the U.S. are 25 times more likely to die from gun homicide than people in other wealthy countries, according to a 2016 study in the American Journal of Medicine.
Journalists are in a unique position. Not only are they subject to the random everyday workplace violence spawned by divorces, jealousy, terminations, robberies and disgruntled customers. Journalists also as part of their job often cover and expose facts about people that the subjects would prefer not to have exposed. Journalists go to the scenes of shootings, accidents, robberies, fires, floods and earthquakes. Besides the environmental dangers that can be posed in covering the news, there is also always the human factor which can result in tragedy.
Florida TV reporter Dylan Lyons was killed on the job while covering the murder of a woman in Pine Hills, a community just outside of Orlando. He was there filming when the suspect returned to the scene and shot Lyons and his cameraman Jesse Walden. Walden survived.
The five victims of the Annapolis mass shooting were in their work space, where it was literally just another day at the office – until it wasn’t.
After the shooting in Maryland, I decided to put together a presentation for the Arkansas Press Association on self-defense for journalists, which I finally got completed just in time for the COVID-19 pandemic to shut everything down.
Besides being a career journalist (I’m currently the editor of The Saline Courier in Benton, Ark.) with nearly 30 years’ experience, I also had a decade of Human Resources experience during which I encountered numerous violent workplace situations that could have escalated but, thankfully, did not result in any deaths.
I also am a martial artist, with four decades of study in a wide range of disciplines, and have taught women’s self-defense classes and assisted in teaching law enforcement self-defense classes over the years, so I thought I could offer some insights to my co-workers on staying safe both in the newsroom and out on the streets.
“Usually, self-defense is considered survival against unprovoked attacks by human attackers.
In actuality, self-defense is so much more nuanced than that. Preserving one’s life is far more complex than a few hand strikes or gunshots,” writes podcaster Serge Antonin on the website blackandwhiteandthinbluelines.com.
The essence of self-defense is awareness. Being aware of your surroundings both inside your newsroom and out on the street covering a story is the first, and biggest, step you can take toward being safe.
Antonin lists four essential types of awareness:
Situational Awareness — People often create circumstances that adversely affect them. Understanding this and the hazards created by strangers is paramount when considering self-defense.
Environmental Awareness — Understanding that different environments hold different perils is crucial.
Preparational Awareness — Possession of the proper tools, training, and mindset to survive an environment or live adversary is very important.
Capability Awareness — The accurate estimation of one’s abilities is critical.
Just as your company probably requires you to wear a reflective vest when covering traffic accidents, you should think of your awareness as your internal reflective vest and you should put it on whenever you go out to cover a story, especially one that involves violent crime.
Situational awareness requires you to see what is happening around you. It also requires that you listen to your gut instincts – If your little voice is telling you something is wrong, it probably is. Is that loud argument two tables over just rowdy friends or is it about to erupt in gunfire? Is the person who just walked into your office with his flow chart explaining how the President is trying to read his thoughts harmless?
Environmental awareness seems common sensical if you’re covering an ice storm or a wild fire, but it also applies to your workplace and home. Right now, look at your surroundings. If you spotted a shooter walking toward you, what would you do? Where would you go? Do you have an escape route? A second doorway or a window?
Preparational awareness is where we generally fall down as a profession, and as a society. Often, the thinking is the police will be there to handle any serious incidents, but sadly in most cases the police arrive after the shooting has begun, not before. Basic self-defense teachings aren’t part of most workplaces unless you are working in law enforcement or security, but a basic common-sense self-defense course, whether through the NRA or a concealed-carry instructor or a realistic self-defense program, such as Krav Maga, are really helpful. Often, police departments will offer basic courses to the public, and it would not be a bad idea to have one such course offered annually in newsrooms.
Capability awareness is best summed up by Dirty Harry Callahan’s edict delivered in the 1973 film Magnum Force: “A man’s got to know his limitations.”
The basic motto for active shooter situations is Run, Hide, Fight – and you should be able to do a little of all three. As horrible as active shooter drills in elementary schools sound, they are teaching skills that most adults who don’t have a military service background haven’t cultivated. Wherever you are, basic self-defense awareness includes finding the quickest way to the closest exit, looking for a safe barrier to duck behind, and having a basic idea of how to fend off an attacker.
Ultimately, defensive awareness should extend to all parts of one’s life. Living defensively doesn’t mean being paranoid or fearful. Tornadoes happen, and if you live in Arkansas, chances are you have a tornado close encounter story to tell. But you probably don’t run to the nearest closet every time it rains.
In the same fashion, being aware of the potential for violence and learning to pay attention to one’s surroundings can save lives – not only yours, but also those around you.
Links to useful resources listed below:
OSHA
https://www.osha.gov/workplace-violence/resources
CDC
https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/violence/
FBI Training Video
https://www.fbi.gov/video-repository/run-hide-fight-092120.mp4/view
NRA Refuse to be a Victim training
https://onlinetraining.nra.org/online-courses/refuse-to-be-a-victim-instructor-development-course/
Krav Maga FAQs
http://www.kravfit.us/faqs.php
Randal Seyler is an Arkansas native and a career journalist, serving as editor for 17 different newspapers in four states since taking his first editor’s job in 1986. Currently he is managing editor of The Saline Courier in Benton, Ark. He has also studied a variety of martial arts over the past 45 years, and has taught karate and Tai Chi for over 30 years to hundreds of students. He is the author of Heads Up! Self Defense for Journalists. He is available for self-defense seminars and workplace violence prevention training. For more information, contact Randal at ransey303@gmail.com.
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