After thugs gunned down Oakland journalist Chauncey Bailey in 2007, three dozen local newspaper, journalism schools, radio stations and local journalists banded together and formed the Chauncey Bailey Project, to pursue his killers.
“When a journalist is killed, we’re all one family,” said Project direct Robert Rosenthal. The Project successfully assisted in identifying the mob boss that gave the order to kill Bailey. The mob leader is now serving a life term without parole.
Before Bailey, It had been over 20 years since hoodlums murdered a newspaper reporter in the United States
In 1976, after heroic newspaper reporting toppled Nixon’s corrupt presidency, hundreds of intrepid journalists gathered for the first Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) convention. Their special guest, Dan Bolles, never appeared.
Phoenix Racketeers blew up his car. Doctors could not repair his shattered body. He died a few days later.
The Newseum in Washington DC has Bolles’ car on exhibit.
Then, US Journalists acted like first responders. They figuratively ran towards the danger.
They formed the Arizona Project; a coalition of a dozen or more papers and media outlets, with scores of reporters available. They were determined to expose the shadowy racketeers that ran Arizona with such impunity that they could murder a newspaper reporter.
My own father was one who sprang to journalism’s defense. He’d taken a weekly fishwrap gossip sheet in Omaha and had won it a Pulitzer. He could have spent the rest of his days pontificating in a University lecture hall and attending faculty lunches, or he could defend his profession.
Paul Norman Williams, my dad.
He originally helped form the IRE and The Arizona Project, but 4 packs of Parliament cigarettes a day damaged his heart and took him from us, too soon. Bob Greene from Newsday on Long Island took over IRE and the Project and made journalistic history. The project exposed the Mafia’s far reach into Arizona business and politics, and helped create the conditions that led to convictions of the higher-ups in the Bolles murder.
Once, newspaper reporters would not let the killing of Dan Bolles (pictured) go unavenged.
My mom was a newspaper reporter too. She also co-authored a book on investigative reporting, after she finished raising 4 rowdy kids.
My niece wrote for the Oakland California area papers, when there were still papers there.
And I wrote for Willamette Week in Portland Oregon. I got death threats after my award-winning story about a heroin trafficker who had the word “Dealer” on the license plate of his Rolls, and whom survived a machine gun battle on city streets. He declined my interview offer.
The police used the information in my story to get a search warrant. They busted the dealer and sent him to prison. Death threats are just part of the price of admission.
And now Saudi Arabia dismembers a writer who is living in the US and writing for the Washington Post. My own President thinks it is ok because they lowered the price of gasoline a penny.
I wake up every morning and think about the murdered journalist, Jamal Khashoggi. The printers’s ink in my veins is boiling.
Martyred.
The voices of my mother and father shout in my head; “You must do something!”
“What our lives stood for, is under attack.+
But do what? Hang a freeway sign? Boycott Shell?
Meanwhile, the billionaire owner of the Washington Post remains silent about the merciless slaughter of his own employee.
But I cannot remain silent.