When death came knocking

Tom Fox won't win any prizes – well, perhaps he will – for the video he shot of yesterday's incident at the federal courthouse in downtown Dallas. It's raw and confusing and shaky – and very, very real.

It demonstrates, as well as anything can, what it feels like and sounds like to be caught in the “vortex of breaking news.” That's a phrase from one of my college journalism classes – and it conveys well the swirling, chaotic, sensory overload that assault those seized in its grip.

Tom Fox, dispatched by his editors at The Dallas Morning News to the courthouse on a routine photo assignment, found himself swept into the center of that vortex yesterday. He reacted as all journalists hope they would – as I hope I would have when I carried a reporter’s notebook – with calm nerves, clear-eyed professionalism and, yes, with courage.

When you look at the photo below – for which Tom, deservedly, will be remembered for the rest of his career – you see the results of how he reacted when death came knocking and he became part of the news, not just a recorder of it.

The photo, taken as he crouched along a curb, is sharp as a knife’s edge and masterfully framed. It even has a touch of artistry about it – probably luck but luck Tom earned. Along the right edge of the photo, the gunman’s face is reflected in a glass door. It’s a perfect photograph. Perfection and horror all wrapped together forever.

He had less than a second to take it.

Tom did not seek out the fame he is enjoying today. He was just a newspaper photographer on assignment. Confronting crisis, he responded with instinct, skill and grit – qualities that have made him one of the best in the business, even before the events of yesterday. He could do nothing less.

When I hear political opportunists and their mindless supporters call talented and dedicated journalists like Tom Fox “enemies of the American people,” traitors who produce nothing but Fake News, it makes me sick to my stomach. It makes me want to break furniture.

Tom Fox and his colleagues at The News and at newspapers, TV news rooms and online news operations everywhere aren’t our enemies. Far from it.

Under increasingly difficult conditions, they struggle every day, sometimes at great risk, to keep us all well-informed and safe. They are essential to our democracy and to our collective welfare. God only knows what we would do without them. Pray God we will never have to find out.

 Great work, Tom Fox, yesterday and every day. I’m proud to be able to call you my friend.