Los Angeles Times

Commentary: The sorry history of journalists killed in the U.S. for doing their job

An attack on a newspaper is the same as an attack on the Constitution, on the nation's earliest face of the 1st Amendment.

Thursday's murders at the local newspaper in Annapolis, Md., were allegedly committed by a man who police say staged "a targeted attack on the Capital Gazette."

The targeted killing of journalists is something we think of as happening elsewhere - in Mexico, where journalists are gunned down by drug lords and their cronies; in Russia, where journalist critics of Vladimir Putin turn up dead; in Syria and Afghanistan; in France, where Islamic State supporters massacred Charlie Hebdo magazine journalists.

It hasn't happened to a newspaper journalist in the United

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