When a politician gunned down an editor, and got away with it

N.G. Gonzalez was shot after writing many critical editorials about his rivals.

In 1903 a man shot and killed a newspaper editor on the statehouse steps in broad daylight. He was acquitted by a jury who said he had a right to defend his honor.

James J Tillman blamed losing the election on the newspaper editor, and shot him.

A lot of journalists, myself included, are not happy with the rancor in news coverage, the bias, an even the distrust of the media. Some of us think truth is a casualty and that the news media is dead because of its lack of interest in reporting actual news.

The idea of an unbiased news organization is a fairly new development in reality, and it may be on the back burner again as we try to deal with the Internet and the changes that has brought.

The term “yellow journalism,” which means sensationalized news, comes from the early days of newspapers in our country. Some of the papers were printed on a yellowish type paper, and they were political rags. They had no interest in informing the citizenry, but were pushing an ideology or their own version of…