Something happened in 2017, while I was getting ready to launch my career as a journalist, that I’ll never forget. I wasn’t there, to be clear, but what happened was remarkable enough to leave an impression, even second hand.

Then-Representative (now Governor) Greg Gianforte of Montana assaulted reporter Ben Jacobs of The Guardian in public, in front of other reporters.

Gianforte goes from calmly referring a question about healthcare to a spokesperson to tackling Jacobs and shouting at him in an instant. There was no warning. Jacobs hardly knows how to react.

This wasn’t about Jacobs. He was no threat. He was not acting aggressively, which is backed up by eyewitness accounts and the audio recording of the incident. He wasn’t armed; reporters carry pens and cameras on the job, not knives and guns. Likewise, he wasn’t trespassing; journalists don’t commit crime in the course of reporting (ethics aside, we’d have to publish evidence of our own crimes).

Jacobs asked a question, and when Gianforte tried to put him off, he asked again. This is normal for a good reporter. Reporters generally try to be nice, but sometimes we have to be dogged to get a response. If reporters were easily put off after the first attempt, no politician would ever respond to anything but softball questions from supportive outlets at pre-arranged interviews.

The fact is, Gianforte was not mad at Jacobs. Gianforte, in his outburst, even referred to “the last guy,” grouping Jacobs in with other reporters. He was angry at being questioned. He was angry at being held accountable to the public.

Gianforte’s outburst was nothing personal, it was professional.

When public figures get angry or annoyed at reporters, it’s not because of us as individuals, it’s because of what we represent; the public, and the accountability of politicians to their constituents.

Without the press and responsible reporting, elections are nothing but a popularity contest, and politicians know it. They prefer it. It’s much easier for them to glad-hand with a few wealthy donors than it is to actually do the hard work of responsibly governing for the people.

So they do what they can to avoid reporters. They hand us off to spokespeople, they walk away from hard questions, and they try to scare us off with threats of violence. And sometimes, they even follow through.

Initially, Gianforte tried to deny the assault, spinning a different version of events from what was eventually re-established in court. He was charged and pled guilty to misdemeanor assault, but he served no jail time. The judge let him off with making a donation and doing community service, as well as anger management therapy.

However, since then, Gianforte has resumed denying the facts of the assault, and has received praise from political supporters for assaulting a journalist. He was subsequently raised to the position of governor.

If newsreaders want the truth, rewarding violence toward the press cannot become part of the American political playbook. It cannot become advantageous to attack representatives of the press. If reporters become a target, the truth will be lost, and it will be very, maybe impossibly, hard to recover.

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