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Bustos expresses concern about the safety of journalists

Congresswoman Cheri Bustos says having spent almost two decades as a newspaper reporter prior to a career in politics, last week’s shooting at the Capital Gazette newspaper in Maryland which left five people dead hits a little bit close to home.

Bustos tells WGIL she agrees with the assertion that all journalists should be able to do their jobs without the threat of death or great bodily harm.

“The fact that our founding fathers wrote the First Amendment as freedom of the press and freedom of speech should be noted,” says Bustos (D-East Moline). “If you look back to the earliest part of our history, how important press has been to drawing to the attention of the American public what’s going on in government, what goes on behind the scenes, exposing corruption in some cases.”

Bustos says she feels while it may sound good that President Donald Trump says journalists need to be protected from acts of violence on them, his actions before last week’s shooting prove otherwise.

“What the President says and what he does sometimes end up being two different things,” Bustos says, “if you look at his political rallies where those in attendance have, in some cases, physically gone after reporters who stand eye to eye and an inch apart, yelling profanities at reporters.”

The East Moline Democrat says whether it’s that behavior or presidential tweets that disparage groups of people, that type of behavior is “counter-productive” to the sort of society the president should be a part of.

Bustos was in Galesburg Tuesday as part of a federal program that provides duplicate copies of books from the Library of Congress to libraries and other agencies.

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