What would it take for you to fire your weapon after a bump in the night?

What Fox viewers will not learn about media culture now

By Ken Tingley

This happened to us years ago. We had lived in our new home just a short time. The property is isolated on a bluff overlooking a quiet road to nowhere in Queensbury. The house came with a security system that we never used. We had our own security as well - two sleepy dogs.

It was well after midnight and we heard a thumping on the front door. It startled us. We looked at each other concerned.

The dogs looked at us even more concerned.

We heard the thumping on the front door again.

I slowly got up, and grabbed one of my collectible baseball bats from the other room and started moving toward the door. I believe the dogs were behind me.

There was no one outside I could see.

I slowly stepped out onto the porch, but I did not see anyone.

As I stepped back into the house, my wife met me. Suddenly, there was thumping on the door at the back of the house.

My wife looked at me.

I looked at her.

“We are not opening that door,” she said.

We were scared.

We all have fear, especially in the dark of night. I like to think my imagination got the best of me that night. But even though I was rattled, I never wished I had a firearm to defend myself.

I’m actually ashamed of myself now. It was probably someone who needed help. It might have been a teenager who had been partying up by the reservoir and couldn’t get his car started. I should have opened the door.

After the shooting in Washington County and another in Kansas City this weekend, Albany Times Union columnist Chris Churchill asked the question we all should be asking:

“So what, if anything, explains why two older men with no apparent history of violent behavior would be so paranoid and trigger-happy? What happened to them? What is happening to us?”

Churchill concluded we have become “increasingly isolated and disconnected.”

And this observation that may be even more important:

“Too often, our sense of the world and its dangers come via our television or computer screens, sensationalized and polarizing,” Churchill wrote. “Every terrible thing that happens is delivered to us almost in real-time. The good things that happen — the kindness of strangers, the grace within us — go largely unnoticed.”

Because of my 40 years of newspaper experience, I was no stranger to the crimes in our community, but the reality was random violence is extremely rare.

Mugging victims who reported they had been held up by a black assailant were usually lying to cover up a gambling debt or drug problem.

Home invasions turned out to be a drug dealer who was owed money and went to the wrong address.

Assaults usually happened in bars, or worse, behind closed doors between couples.

As my son grew up with an interest in firearms and target shooting, I had conversations with gun owners about why they kept guns at the ready. The answer was some version of protecting their homes and families.

I’m not against the Second Amendment.

If you feel you need a firearm to protect your home, then make sure you are trained in how to handle it safely. Make sure you take precautions so there are no accidents at home.

But the most important question was this: “Under what circumstances would you use your weapon during a burglary?

Is your television set worth killing someone over?

Is your wife’s jewelry?

How about your gun collection?

Or being cut off in traffic by a rude driver?

Under what circumstances would you take a human life?

I never asked about trespassing.

Churchill pointed out that sociologists and surveys show we are “less likely to join clubs and churches, know our neighbors, and live near family. We’re more likely to be lonely and anxious. We increasingly view those we don’t know well, including those of different political beliefs, as suspicious or even evil.”

The Hebron shooting raises these questions, but not for the first time,

On June 19, 2016, a car with New Hampshire plates drove up Brian Tschorn’s driveway in the town of Salem. The man was looking for the new home of a relative.

Tschorn greeted the lost man with a  barrage of 40 shots from two rifles. One of the shots penetrated the cab of the truck and missed the driver’s head by less than an inch.

Tschorn was sentenced to 2 1/3 to seven years in prison, but got out of jail after serving 23 months. He was released from prison in December 2018.

This time, a young woman was killed.

And I suspect there are those who will defend the accused for his actions.

Why are we so scared while living in some of the safest communities in the country?

Dominion settles

The reason so many of us with news backgrounds are disappointed that Dominion took the money in its lawsuit with Fox News has nothing to do with politics.

It has to do with truth.

Too many people don’t seem to understand the commitment that professional news organizations have to factual reporting and getting the story right

David Firestone, a member of the New York Times editorial board, explained it pretty well in his commentary Friday.

“Still, nothing would have compared with a full-length trial in this case and a victory for Dominion, which many legal experts said was a strong possibility. That kind of defeat for a major news organization almost never happens, and the reason is that unlike their counterparts at Fox, journalists in conventional newsrooms don’t actually plot to deceive their audiences. They might make mistakes, they might be misled by a source or cast a story in a way they later regret, but with very rare exceptions they don’t deliberately lie.”

That was my experience over 40 years in the newspaper business.

“The emails and text messages demonstrating Fox’s knowing deceit, which came out in pre-trial discovery, were shocking both in their cynicism and in their deviation from industry norms,” Firestone wrote. “Vociferous press critics on the right and the left will scoff at this notion, but the fact is that journalists in functional newsrooms want to tell the truth. And they do so not because they fear getting sued but because that’s why they got into the business.”

That may not be why I initially got into the business, but it is certainly why I stayed.

More from PBS

Apparently my interview with Mountain Lake PBS last month was long enough for another interview with some outtakes from my speech at the Plattsburgh Rotary Club.

Mountain Lake will show the latest version of the interview over the next four days:

- Friday, 8 p.m.

- Saturday, 7 p.m.

- Sunday, 10 a.m.

- Monday, 5:30 p.m.

For those of you in the Plattsburgh area, you can pick up “The Last American Newspaper” at The Corner Stone Bookshop in Plattsburgh.

Vermont journalism

Local newspapers are getting help across Vermont with the aid of “The Community News Service.” It’s an academic news partnership that places student journalists in media outlets across the state to work with students and publish their work.

It gets professional experience for the students and badly needed news stories for the news outlets at no cost to them.

It won’t solve the problem of news deserts, but it will help a little bit.

It would be nice to see New York colleges do the same thing.

Buffalo cuts

The Poynter Institute reported this week that the Buffalo News had $1 million cut from its news budget this year by Lee Enterprises.

Four veteran journalists took buyouts and the copy desk and print production have been outsourced.

The Post-Star in Glens Falls is also owned by Lee.