The newsroom was sleepy early one morning. The newspaper I worked for on Staten Island had been put to bed for the day at 7 a.m..  And I was hiding behind my big reporter’s cup of coffee, waiting to see what breaking news the new day would offer. Where would I get sent? The city editor soon roused me.

“This is a gory one, Rob,” the editor said. At 8:30 in the morning two hitmen had walked into a bar and unloaded their guns on a patron, killing him and splattering his blood. I was sent to the scene of the crime. 

I was a 25-year-old newspaper reporter earning my spurs in the world of journalism, covering stories from clogged sewers to scandals in nursing homes but this was my first murder.  The journalism life was always an adventure.

Yellow police tape surrounded the scene but when I showed my NYC press pass the cops let me through. “Why does he get in?” someone yelled. The answer that the authorities had agreed to was that I should have a privilege to see the crime, to enable me to carry the news back to the people.

What I saw became the lead of my story — Sinatra playing on the juke box, brain smatters on the mirror behind the broken whiskey bottles, a body of a young man sprawled on the floor. As I left one cop whispered to me, the guy was a gun runner and he stiffed the mob. They killed him. My big tip! Later that day I discovered guns in the back seat of the victim’s car and alerted the police. 

Don Lemon and the First Amendment in the age of Trump

I’m recalling my “privilege” — which was not the law but just a courtesy the NYPD and other agencies gave the press — because of the case of Don Lemon, 59, the former anchor from CNN who is now an independent journalist. He was charged on Jan. 26 with a conspiracy to deprive others of civil rights and interfering........

© Daily Messenger (MPNnow)