I was in the news business. It was my first real job. I was young, like Alison Parker and Adam Ward were, and my job took me to all corners of my city, many neighborhoods that I ordinarily wouldn’t have seen, and others that were wholly familiar. Through our camera lens and through my colleagues’ reporting, we heard stories of inspiration, of desperation, of crime and punishment; stories of hope and loss; stories that served as a microcosm of the human condition. And at the end of each day, those stories were broadcast to hundreds of thousands of people, perhaps millions, those viewers learning something new about the place they lived in, learning a little bit about neighbors they had never met, and perhaps never would, save for that 2:15 package sandwiched in between commercials for car services and lawyers.
But in all the years that I was out in the field, and then later on behind the assignment desk, I never truly felt like my or my colleagues’ lives were in danger. There were perils of the job to be sure: shooting a standup besides a busy street and almost getting hit by passing cars, or getting b-roll during a storm, or during a violent strike, or chasing a crime suspect to get footage of her – there was always the possibility that something bad might happen, and that we might get hurt.
Never did I think, though, that someone would murder me, or our reporters, producers, or anyone else in our broadcast journalism world.
Perhaps that was naivete; perhaps the world has simply changed.
Perhaps there are simply more murderous madmen in the world with easy access to guns.
When 24-year-old Alison Park and 27-year-old Adam Ward went to their assignment – a morning feature, as local TV news folks might call it, on the 50th anniversary of a local resort – I doubt that they thought their lives would end at the hands of one of those murderous madmen.
They worked for WDBJ TV, one of the stations in the Roanoke-Lynchburg market, ranked 68th in the United States and with more than 445,400 “television homes,” according to Nielsen. (New York City, by comparison, is ranked first, with almost 7.4 million TV homes.) The morning feature was as local as local news gets, and by all accounts, Alison and Adam were beloved.
As the interview with local chamber of commerce chief Vicki Gardner unfolds, there is no sense of danger. No pause by the interviewer or the interviewee to indicate there was anything wrong, at all.
Then, gunshots.
Alison screams and turns to run.
Vicki turns to run.
The camera falls to the ground.
The gunman is seen, briefly.
Alison and Adam are dead. Vicki is wounded, though is later said to be expected to live.
And the control room cuts away from the scene to a visibly shaken anchorwoman, who, like the thousands of people watching WDBJ TV at around 6:45 on a Wednesday morning, have no idea what just happened.
Had no idea that Alison and Adam were no more.
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We cannot know what grief and sorrow are coursing through their families now. We cannot know how their colleagues have become numb, and shellshocked, two of their own taken so suddenly and violently in the course of a morning news show during a segment on a local tourist hotspot.
The meaninglessness of it.
The cruelty of it.
I still have friends in the local TV news business. Before today, we’d share stories about life in the field, having to re-shoot standups because of flubbed lines and remembering all the crazy assignments from today, and yesterday, and from years ago. Silly things like movie premieres and building openings and politicians’ press conferences and fashion shows and sports championships and yes, segments about local tourist hotspots.
And most of us probably still can’t imagine anything happening like what happened to Alison and Adam today.
The meaninglessness of it.
The cruelty of it.