The Washington PostDemocracy Dies in Darkness

The Annapolis shooting was an attack on a newspaper — and on women

The fight isn’t just about guns or the news media

Perspective by
July 2, 2018 at 10:57 a.m. EDT

I worked at the Capital Gazette in Annapolis from 1989 to 1992 as the editorial writer. It wasn’t my favorite job; I had differences of opinion and style with management. The staff, though — the staff was amazing, and fiercely dedicated to community journalism. A reporter or editor could stay at the Capital for years then because it paid well for a community newspaper — and many did. It covered politics (then-Gov. William Donald Schaefer (D) used to send handwritten notes raging against stories and editorials), the Naval Academy (breaking a story about a female midshipman chained to a urinal), schools, the environment and those community events that, though seemingly minor, are what weave us together. Its leaders used to brag about its market penetration.

‘We are heartbroken, devastated’: Front page of Capital Gazette mourns loss of 5 colleagues after shooting

The current staff includes a few holdovers from my years, including two among the five killed in a shooting Thursday at the newspaper. We veterans of those days are known as the Rolling Donut Society, based on an apocryphal insult created by foul-tempered former owner Philip Merrill, which involved doing something unprintable atop a rolling breakfast treat. I see on social media that the people who work there remain as committed as we were back then, and that they are doing more with less. I am in awe of the presence of mind they had to cover their own tragedy in real time and the devotion and strength required to put out a paper the day after their co-workers were killed and injured, even as much of the rest of the country was already lobbing accusations and recriminations or sending empty thoughts and prayers.

But amid all the charges and countercharges, one comment stood out to me. Someone with the handle @Antithesis_Red tweeted:

Yes, President Trump’s “enemy of the people” propaganda could have had an impact on someone who already had a grudge against the news media, tipping him into violence. But you know which attitude expressed by our president more directly dovetails with the alleged shooter’s beliefs? The idea that you can grab women “by the p—y.” Because this tragedy, like so many, started when a woman did not return affections a man felt entitled to.

“The appellant was charged with a criminal act,” wrote Judge Charles E. Moylan Jr. “The appellant perpetrated a criminal act. The appellant plead guilty to having perpetrated a criminal act. The appellant was punished for his criminal act. He is not entitled to equal sympathy with his victim and may not blithely dismiss her as a ‘bipolar drunkard.’ He does not appear to have learned his lesson.”

He had not. Three years later, authorities say, he would shoot his way through the glass doors at the Capital Gazette.

This male sense of entitlement to a woman’s body and affection is ingrained in our society. Young women are taught that they must expect attention from men who want something from them that they don’t want to give. They’re encouraged to put up with it, be polite, make nice, try not to hurt their feelings. No one considers how absolutely outrageous it is. Would anyone tell a man that he should let down easy some acquaintance who felt entitled to his devotion or body (or his car or money)? Of course not.

18-year-old Sofia Biondi, likely the last person Wendi Winters interviewed, recounted her time with the journalist just before Winters was shot and killed. (Video: Joyce Koh/The Washington Post)

Sometimes, the mind-set that allows a man to believe he can compel affection from a woman who doesn’t want to give it doesn’t stop there. It can lead directly to that same man thinking a newspaper should publish his version of the interactions between him and that woman, or that a judge should rule that a newspaper that fails to publish his version has defamed him. After all, he’s right, she’s wrong, and anyone who doesn’t see it that way is wrong, too. And when people don’t see it his way, this mind-set can lead a man to think that those people deserve punishment, too.

There’s a reason that mass shooters are almost always men. There’s a reason so many mass shootings — 54 percent between January 2009 and December 2016, according to Everytown for Gun Safety — are related to domestic or family violence. The gunman who killed Texas churchgoers was court-martialed for assaulting his wife and child; the one who murdered revelers at the Pulse nightclub had beaten his ex-wife; the gunman who shot down Las Vegas concertgoers verbally abused his girlfriend; the Texas teen accused of killing 10 at his school targeted a girl who reportedly had rejected his advances. There aren’t many steps from thinking that a woman owes you something to concluding that the world owes you something, as well. And that when the world doesn’t deliver, you are justified in your anger, justified in lashing out, justified even in killing people over it.

On Thursday, it was my fellow journalists. Next time, it will be other bystanders, who have also done nothing wrong but live in a country where a guy with a grudge against the media and a staggering sense of entitlement can find validation for both from the president — and, of course, easy access to a gun. John McNamara, Gerald Fischman, Wendi Winters, Rebecca Smith, Rob Hiaasen and all the other victims of mass shootings deserved a better country.

The fight isn’t just about guns or the news media. The fight is also about the idea that any woman owes any man anything.

Elizabeth Chang, an editor in the Lifestyle sections of The Washington Post, has also been an editor in the magazine and has written for a variety of sections, including the magazine, Travel, Outlook, Book World and Style.

This article originally appeared in The Washington Post.