Journalists around the country on Thursday paused for a moment of silence to mark one week since a gunman killed four journalists and a sales assistant at the Capital Gazette newsroom in Annapolis, Maryland. It was the deadliest day for journalists in the United States since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
CNN host Brooke Baldwin paused the network’s on-air coverage at 2:33, and Fox News host Dana Perino acknowledged the moment at that time.
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) and Sens. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) and Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said on Twitter that they planned to participate.
County employees and police officers in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, also observed the moment in Annapolis.
The idea for the moment of silence originated earlier this week with editors at The Baltimore Sun, the parent company of the Capital Gazette. Other journalism organizations, including the American Society of News Editors, the Associated Press Media Editors and the Society of Professional Journalists, asked their members to commemorate the slain journalists at 2:33 p.m. EDT, the exact time the shooting began last Thursday.
In a powerful editorial published Thursday morning, Capital Gazette editor Rick Hutzell wrote fond remembrances of the five victims: Gerald Fischman, Rob Hiaasen, John McNamara, Rebecca Smith and Wendi Winters.
He also urged people to honor the shooting survivors, who doggedly reported on the horror affecting their own newsroom and have kept working amid their grief.
“We will continue to honor our dead. But we also will remember those who remain,” Hutzell wrote. “They were journalists. And so are we.”
On Wednesday, current and former staffers at the paper marched in Annapolis’ Fourth of July parade as a show of solidarity with the community they serve.
“We’ll be on West Street and Main Street because we want our readers and our community to see that we believe things will, eventually, be OK again,” the paper wrote in an editorial ahead of the parade. “Eventually.”
The paper’s staff marked the moment of silence on Thursday in their temporary newsroom, adorned with their parade banner, according to Capital Gazette photojournalist Paul Gillespie.
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