News-Record.com

If you spend a lot of time reporting hard news for a newspaper, you'll make a few enemies if you do your job right. Most days, at most papers, that means nothing. In fact, compared to the outright threats to life and limb faced by reporters in some other countries, it means less than nothing.

But sometimes the danger gets a little too real even locally. That's what's alleged to have happened Tuesday in Alamance County, where a developer is charged with assaulting and threatening a reporter for the Times-News over a story the reporter had written in November. The reporter is pressing charges at the insistence of the executive editor, Lee Barnes.

I've known Lee for almost 20 years, and I trust his judgment. More than that, I wholeheartedly agree with his direction on this.

If you do reporting right, sooner or later you will have your intelligence, patriotism and sexual orientation questioned by people who could take lessons from linoleum, who would sell nukes to Osama bin Laden if the price were right and who would engage in adult relations with a snake if they could get someone to hold its head. That comes with the territory; as the old saying in this business goes, if you want friends, buy a dog.

And I certainly know how ill is my industry's repute -- and how many very good reasons there are for that illness.

But that doesn't give anyone the right to threaten a journalist. And if you assault one, don't be surprised if he or she hits back -- on a number of levels. Because you swallow a lot in this business, but there are some things even we won't eat.