Writer Carl Hiassen on Friday said his brother, a Capital Gazette assistant editor killed in Thursday’s newsroom shooting, was likely aware of the alleged killer’s long-running beef with the newspaper but would never have let that deter him from doing his job.
“If you’re doing your job as a journalist, you’re usually pissing somebody off because you’re getting out information that some people don’t want to be revealed,” Hiassen, a long-time columnist for the Miami Herald and best-selling novelist, told CNN.
Rob Hiaasen was among five Gazette staffers gunned down at their Annapolis, Maryland, office. The 59-year-old was a columnist and assistant editor at the Gazette. He previously worked at the Palm Beach Post.
Carl Hiaasen said Ramos’ “hatred” for the paper had festered for years — but that ultimately, no one could’ve predicted his murderous rampage.
“How do you even predict or foresee or prepare yourself for that kind of madness and that kind of eruption?” said Carl Hiaasen. “I’m sure Rob was aware this guy had been tweeting and had this gripe but you can’t let it cripple you every day, you going into work with a sense of being haunted by it. You go in and put out a newspaper — that’s your job. And that’s what the Capital Gazette staff did yesterday despite this horrible, horrible tragedy.”
The two brothers spoke candidly about the “rhetoric and hatred” journalists face on the job.
“But we also reminded ourselves in our whole lifetimes and careers that working journalist have never been at the top of the popularity list,” Carl Hiaasen said.
The grieving brother said that as a small, local paper, the Gazette couldn’t afford security measures that other larger publications could.
“It’s a hometown newspaper, it’s almost like a storefront operation. You have a little bit different relationship with a smaller town than you do if you’re working for the Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal,” he said. “You’re a bigger physical target, you have different layers of security that most small papers don’t have and can’t afford.”
