We Won’t Stop On Account Of Fear

A decade ago, Bill Wassmuth was talking on the phone with a friend late one night when a blast shook him.

Three white supremacists had placed a pipe bomb in a trash can behind the former Catholic priest’s rectory. They wanted to intimidate him; they wanted Wassmuth to quit defending human rights.

Wassmuth, now director of the Northwest Coalition on Malicious Harassment, admitted later he feared for his life, but he refused to back away from his cause. Said he: “I won’t be controlled by fear.”

Now, it’s our turn to send that message to the cowards who endangered dozens of people by bombing our Valley office and a U.S. Bank building on Monday.

We’ll continue to cover the news without fear, including the activities of white supremacists, militias and freemen. It’s a common tactic for hate groups to launch their attacks against institutions - the federal government, the media.

Make no mistake: This wasn’t an attack on the media - it was an attack on good, hard-working people. A Spokesman-Review circulation employee and his two young sons missed serious injury or death only by seconds.

“In many ways, this tells the importance of us as a newspaper to continue to report in an evenhanded, comprehensive way about the activities of these groups,” said Spokesman-Review Editor Chris Peck.

But the pipe bombs cost us a bit of innocence.

Employees of The Spokesman-Review value the candid relationship we have with our community. Even when we’ve disagreed with popular politics or policies, we’ve always worked with the confidence and trust that we could agree to disagree. Without violence.

That trust is in danger today.

Already, The Spokesman-Review has taken steps to protect employees, tactics used at U.S. government buildings, county courthouses and other targets of domestic terrorism. We’ve added security cameras and a guard at the entrance to the newsroom floor. The public will have a harder time entering our building and bureaus. We’re sorry. That’s the way things have to be for now.

Ultimately, the thugs who bombed the two buildings and robbed the U.S. Bank will be caught. Then we’ll know if they were motivated by ideology or old-fashioned greed. Several clues point to militia involvement.

If those hints were meant to bully us, however, they have failed. As far as our news coverage goes, it’ll be business as usual.

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = D.F. Oliveria/For the editorial board