"You can't kill a story by killing a journalist"

On Wednesday, March 24, The Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication welcomed five reporters of the celebrated Chauncey Bailey Project to the McGill Medal Round Table Discussion.

For 75 minutes, Grady’s Drewry room was silent as reporters Bob Butler, Mary Fricker, Thomas Peele, and Josh Richman, along with editor Martin Reynolds, spoke to current and past McGill fellows of their experiences as members of this hard-hitting, unlikely-matched investigative news team that was seeking justice for one of their own. The Chauncey Bailey Project is a collaborative news investigation of the murder of Oakland Post reporter, Chauncey Bailey, on August 2, 2007, in Oakland, California. The goal of the Project, as the five journalists constantly stressed, was to not just report on their peer and friend’s murder, but to finish the work he had started.

“You can’t kill a story by killing a journalist” was the mantra repeated over and over during the discussion, and it is instantly obvious that these reporters really mean what they say. As the conversation progressed, the reporters explained how they had jumped into this project showing relatively no fear or hesitation—as Bob Butler said, their fearless resulted from just being too busy to have the time to sit back and really consider the dangerous situations they were in. Be it a remarkable level of journalistic dedication or a slightly naïve eagerness to tell the story, this attitude undoubtedly seems to have been the thing that spurred their efforts on. If they had not been so free and fearless in their reporting, it is likely that they would not have been able to take the risks needed to capture the story and expose the terrible crimes of the Bey clan.

The four reporters of The Chauncey Bailey Project were invited as the honored guests to the McGill Medal Round Table Discussion to impart wisdom about journalistic courage. The group received the 2010 McGill Medal for Journalistic Courage in a ceremony later that evening. The award is awarded annually to “working U.S. journalists whose careers have exemplified journalistic courage.”