Telling the Truth Takes a Toll

To borrow a conceit from transgender superstar Dylan Mulvaney, it’s Day 585 of Being a Reporter for me. I’ve been employed at PJ Media for just over a year and a half now, and it’s been fabulous. The professionals I work with are absolute aces, and PJ Media readers are intelligent, thoughtful, and uplifting people with whom I adore interacting. But most importantly, my eyes have been opened wider than I ever wanted to know they could be. And truth be told, it takes a toll.

Combine even the most rudimentary knowledge of world history with the kind of giga-watt exposure to what’s really going on around the globe that one gets at PJ Media, and you have a recipe for serious anxiety. For the past few nights, it’s manifested itself in disturbing dreams for me. One time, I dreamed I was lying in bed, trying to sleep and looking at the night sky through the window. An ever-present news source played somewhere in another room, talking about the latest Chinese spy balloon. And I could see it through my window, so close to the Earth that it was bigger than the moon. The news voice in the other room said it was so close now that it was targeting individual homes, and I realized that my home was the target. I was frightened and angry — why was an enemy spycraft permitted into U.S. airspace to invade my privacy and terrorize me and my family? I felt isolated and helpless.

Last night, the scene was midtown Manhattan, where I happened to be for a work event. It was just turning evening, and the street lights had all come on and were reflecting off the rain-wet pavement. People dressed for the office were hurrying up sidewalks and across crosswalks, the collars of their raincoats pulled up — a quintessential New York City rush hour scene. Then suddenly, half a dozen enormous white vans pulled into the intersection and parked in formation. And I mean, these vans were big — rectangular in shape and probably measuring 60 feet long and 20 feet across the beam. The tailgates dropped simultaneously, becoming ramps, and I saw that each van was actually an urban landing craft. Hundreds of black-clad armed soldiers (carrying assault rifles! lol) deployed from each and ran off to carry out some mission. As the government forces scurried off to clamp down on whatever the immediate DOJ target was, I immediately thought of my family. I knew we weren’t targeted at that moment, but our time was probably running short.

…You get the idea. Reporting the inconvenient truths that Big News won’t tell you exposes us PJ Media staff to a lot of scary stuff. As one friend phrased it, we reporters and editors earn our living basically by doom scrolling.

Before I worked at PJ Media, if the news became too stressful or depressing, I could take a break for a few weeks to regain my equilibrium. But reporters don’t have that luxury. We have to seek out the disturbing things that are happening, dig into them, understand them, and tell the world about them. And while at least most of us aren’t suffering pre-dawn FBI raids (like Project Veritas journalists were targeted with) or falling out of windows à la Russian media control tactics, we are carrying a burden nonetheless.

We know too much. And no matter how much we want to turn away from the frightening, the violent, the bigoted, and the corrupt, we can’t. We are called to immerse ourselves in it so that we can report it to you, our esteemed community of readers.

Because we’d rather know the truth and face reality than live in a fantasy world of ignorance, and we know you feel the same way.

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