INDIANAPOLIS | CGN News previously reported on the adult business ventures of an Indiana Army National Guard Officer, and requested comment concerning records reviewed for the article.
Instead, the returned request for comment warned that the editor and his family would “be forced to suffer."
CGN News interpreted the message as threatening. The newsroom preserved the e-mail and related information and provided the material to the Indiana State Police for criminal investigation.
No public determination has been made that the message violated criminal law. CGN News is not reporting that its sender has been arrested, charged or convicted of an offense. Any decision to investigate further or pursue charges is at the sole discretion of the Indiana State Police, and Marion County Prosecuting Attorney.
The message nevertheless changed the nature of the story for the journalists working on it.
A request for comment is not an act of aggression; it is one of journalism’s most basic fairness procedures.
It gives a person, business, public official or government agency an opportunity to explain records, dispute allegations, identify errors, offer context and provide information a newsroom may not possess.
Most people respond professionally, even when they strongly disagree with the reporting. Some decline to comment. Others retain attorneys, issue statements, provide records or demand corrections.
Occasionally, the response becomes personal.
CGN News previously reported on public records and source materials concerning an Indiana Army National Guard officer’s reported outside adult-business connections. As part of that reporting, CGN News contacted people and organizations connected to the records and offered them an opportunity to respond.
Mr. James Rothschild, CEO of the Illuminaughty Group, responded to a request for comment in which he stated, "If you don't stop f*cking with me or my fiance, soon to your whole entire family will be forced to suffer."
Criticism Is Not a Threat
Journalists should be criticized.
News organizations exercise considerable power. They publish names, describe allegations, examine public records, question institutions and influence how readers understand the people and events around them.
That power must be accompanied by accountability.
Readers have every right to challenge an article, question its framing, accuse a newsroom of bias, demand supporting evidence, object to a headline, identify an omitted fact or request a correction.
A person who believes a report is wrong has many legitimate options. The person can provide contrary records, issue a public statement, request a correction, contact an editor, consult an attorney or pursue any other lawful remedy.
Threatening harm to a journalist or the journalist’s family is different.
It does not correct the public record. It does not disprove a document. It does not answer a question.
Its practical effect can be to raise the personal cost of continuing the reporting.
The distinction matters because a newsroom should not characterize every angry e-mail as an imminent physical danger. Reporters routinely receive profanity, insults and accusations. Strong criticism, standing alone, is protected expression.
But threatening an editor and their family over objective, fact based journalism on a topic of public itnerests highlights the importance of journalism in a democracy. In fact, as Scott Pelley was famously quoted as saying in a recent inteview with The New York Times, "There is no democracy without journalism. It can't be done."
Threat assessment often begins without enough information.
The recipient may not know whether the sender knows where the journalist lives, has a history of violence, owns weapons, is acting alone or intends to move beyond words.
Public Visibility Creates Private Risk
Journalists are expected to be accessible.
They publish their names, photographs, email addresses and professional biographies. Television reporters appear on camera. Newspaper journalists attend public meetings. Photographers stand in visible positions at protests, crime scenes and community events.
Editors invite tips, complaints and corrections. Newsrooms identify their offices. Reporters call strangers and ask questions that may be uncomfortable.
Those practices make journalism more transparent and useful.
They can also make journalists easier to locate.
The familiar image of a journalist in danger is often a foreign correspondent wearing body armor near a battlefield.
War reporting remains among the profession’s most hazardous assignments. Reporters and camera crews can be exposed to artillery, missiles, drones, land mines, kidnapping and the collapse of civil institutions.
But journalism’s danger does not begin at the battlefield.
It can begin with a criminal docket, a campaign-finance report, a property record, a workplace complaint, a police report, a zoning dispute or an email requesting comment.
Local reporters may cover people they later encounter at grocery stores, courthouses and public meetings. Small newsrooms may lack security personnel, threat-assessment specialists or attorneys available at all hours.
Independent and digital journalists may work from their homes, making the separation between newsroom and private life even thinner.
The risks can extend beyond the reporter.
A threat directed at a journalist may mention a spouse, partner, child or parent who played no role in the reporting. The message can transform a professional dispute into a private security concern for an entire household.
Alison Parker and Adam Ward
On August 26, 2015, WDBJ reporter Alison Parker and photojournalist Adam Ward were conducting a live television interview at Smith Mountain Lake in Virginia.
Parker was 24. Ward was 27.
The assignment concerned tourism and the local chamber of commerce—the kind of community report television crews complete every day.
A former WDBJ employee approached the crew and opened fire during the broadcast. Parker and Ward were killed. Their interview subject, Vicki Gardner, was wounded.
The attack was broadcast live on WDBJ through Ward’s camera.
The gunman also recorded his own video and distributed it online, extending the violence into a digital spectacle.
CNN, NBC News, The Telegraph and other news organizations examined the gunman’s history, his prior employment conflict with the station and the circumstances surrounding his purchase of the firearm.
Federal officials said he had purchased the weapon legally and passed the required background check.
The significance for journalists goes beyond how the firearm was obtained.
The murders showed that reporters do not need to be covering war, organized crime or political extremism to become targets.
Parker and Ward were visible because their professions required them to stand in a public place with a camera and microphone.
The danger followed them into an ordinary community assignment.
Years after their deaths, Parker’s family continued trying to prevent copies of the murder video from circulating online.
The violence did not end when the shooting stopped. Digital platforms repeatedly exposed relatives and former colleagues to recordings of the attack.
The Capital Gazette
On June 28, 2018, a gunman entered the Capital Gazette newsroom in Annapolis, Maryland, and killed five employees.
The victims were editorial page editor Gerald Fischman, editor and columnist Rob Hiaasen, sports reporter John McNamara, community correspondent Wendi Winters and sales assistant Rebecca Smith.
The attacker had maintained a longstanding grievance against the newspaper after it reported on a criminal harassment case involving him.
He sued the publication for defamation and lost.
His hostility continued for years before he entered the newsroom with a shotgun.
The attack became one of the deadliest acts of violence against a news organization in modern American history.
It also showed how a dispute involving an article can become personalized.
The attacker was not reacting to an abstract institution. He knew the newspaper, its employees, the litigation and the people associated with the publication.
Surviving Capital Gazette employees produced the next day’s newspaper.
That decision was widely recognized as an act of professional resolve. It was also made by people who had hidden from gunfire, lost colleagues and watched their workplace become a crime scene.
A jury later found the gunman criminally responsible for the killings, rejecting his argument that mental illness made him legally incapable of responsibility.
He was sentenced to multiple life sentences without the possibility of parole.
The Capital Gazette attack remains an unavoidable reference point whenever a newsroom receives a message that appears to cross from criticism into threatened harm.
Most angry people do not become violent.
The history of the Capital Gazette demonstrates why a prolonged grievance against a publication or journalist cannot automatically be treated as harmless.
Gunfire at ABC10
On September 19, 2025, shots were fired toward and into the KXTV/ABC10 television station in Sacramento, California.
According to a federal criminal complaint filed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of California, a man fired one shot in the direction of the station before driving to the front of the building and firing three shots directly into its lobby.
An ABC10 employee was inside the lobby. No one was injured.
Federal prosecutors charged the defendant with possessing and discharging a firearm within a school zone and interfering with a radio communication station.
Those charges are allegations. The defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
The incident demonstrated that a newsroom building can itself become a target.
Television stations and newspaper offices often occupy publicly known locations. Their vehicles may carry prominent logos. Employees may arrive and leave on predictable schedules.
Accessibility allows viewers, readers and sources to reach journalists.
The same openness can create security vulnerabilities.
Reporters Killed in War
War correspondents accept dangers that most people will never encounter, but their deaths should not be dismissed as an inevitable cost of conflict.
Italian journalist Almerigo Grilz died in Mozambique on May 19, 1987, while reporting from a battlefield.
A 2017 commemoration in Trieste described Grilz as the first Italian reporter killed on a battlefield since the end of the Second World War.
His reporting had taken him to Afghanistan, Ethiopia, the Philippines, Iran, Cambodia, Burma and Mozambique.
On February 22, 2012, Sunday Times correspondent Marie Colvin and French photojournalist Rémi Ochlik were killed when a media center in Homs, Syria, was struck during government shelling.
Colvin had spent decades reporting from some of the world’s most dangerous conflicts. She wore a distinctive eye patch after losing an eye to shrapnel while reporting in Sri Lanka.
A United States federal court later found the Syrian government responsible for Colvin’s extrajudicial killing.
Evidence submitted in the case supported the conclusion that Syrian forces had identified the media center and deliberately targeted it as part of an effort to silence reporting from Homs.
The judgment rejected the idea that Colvin’s death was merely an unavoidable battlefield accident.
International humanitarian law generally protects civilian journalists working in armed conflict unless they directly participate in hostilities.
The reality is that a press marking, camera or microphone may fail to protect a reporter—and may sometimes make that person more identifiable.
Anna Politkovskaya
Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya spent years documenting the war in Chechnya, human-rights abuses, disappearances, torture and corruption.
The Committee to Protect Journalists reported that she endured threats, detention, forced exile and an apparent poisoning during her career.
On October 7, 2006, she was shot and killed in the elevator of her Moscow apartment building.
Several people were later convicted for roles in the killing, but persistent questions remained about who ordered it.
Politkovskaya’s death demonstrated the danger faced by reporters who repeatedly document alleged abuses involving armed forces, political authorities and powerful regional figures.
It also demonstrated why the killing of a journalist cannot necessarily be considered solved merely because the person who pulled a trigger is identified.
Complete accountability requires determining who planned, financed and ordered an attack.
Daphne Caruana Galizia
Maltese investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia reported on corruption, offshore finance, money laundering and connections between political and business interests.
She faced lawsuits, harassment and threats.
On October 16, 2017, a bomb placed beneath the driver’s seat of her car exploded as she drove away from her home.
The Committee to Protect Journalists reported that Caruana Galizia had told police two weeks before her death that she had received threats.
Her assassination triggered years of investigation and a political crisis in Malta.
Several people have since been convicted for involvement in the killing. In 2025, two men were found guilty of supplying the explosives used in the bombing, and a Maltese appeals court upheld their life sentences in January 2026.
Proceedings involving other alleged participants have continued.
A Maltese public inquiry concluded that the state bore responsibility for creating a culture of impunity and failing to recognize or address the risks Caruana Galizia faced.
Her murder is a warning about what can happen when threats and harassment are treated as an ordinary consequence of challenging powerful interests.
Jamal Khashoggi
On October 2, 2018, Saudi journalist and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to obtain documents for his planned marriage.
He never emerged.
Khashoggi was murdered inside the consulate. His body has never been recovered.
An assessment concluded by the U.S. intelligence community later found that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had personally approved an operation to capture or kill Khashoggi.
Saudi authorities have denied any such allegations against the crown prince.
Khashoggi’s death showed that prominence, international connections and association with a major American newspaper did not protect a journalist who criticized an authoritarian government.
It also showed how state power can be used to reach a journalist beyond the borders of the country being criticized.
A Record Year for Journalist Deaths
The individual cases form part of a much larger pattern.
In February 2026, the Committee to Protect Journalists reported that 129 journalists and media workers had been killed worldwide during 2025.
It was the highest annual number CPJ had documented since beginning its data collection in 1992.
At least 104 of those deaths occurred in conflict settings.
The figure represented CPJ’s verified findings when the report was released. Its live database may change as researchers investigate additional deaths and determine whether they were related to journalistic work.
The organization also documented a rise in deaths involving drones and said very few transparent investigations had been conducted into suspected targeted killings.
UNESCO reported that more than 1,800 journalists were killed worldwide between 2006 and 2025.
Close to nine out of every 10 of those killings remained judicially unresolved.
Impunity is more than the absence of punishment in an individual case.
When the people responsible for killing journalists are not identified and prosecuted, the failure communicates that silencing a reporter may carry little consequence.
The damage extends beyond news organizations.
Information concerning corruption, war crimes, organized crime, environmental destruction and government abuse may disappear with the person gathering it.
Threats That Never Become Headlines
Most journalists who receive threats are not killed.
That does not make the threats inconsequential.
Reporters can be followed, doxxed, stalked, assaulted or subjected to coordinated online harassment.
Their telephone numbers and home addresses may be distributed. Their relatives may receive messages. False allegations may be circulated to damage their careers or isolate them from colleagues.
Female journalists frequently experience sexualized threats, and are frequent targets of stalking.
Journalists from racial, religious and LGBTQ+ communities may receive abuse directed at both their reporting and their identities.
Online threats can create physical-security risks when personal information is exposed.
The recipient must decide whether the sender is venting, attempting to intimidate or preparing to act.
There is rarely enough information to make that assessment with confidence.
For the journalist, the effects can follow the work home.
A reporter may alter travel routes, remove personal information from public databases, stop attending events alone or warn relatives not to respond to unfamiliar visitors.
Those precautions impose a cost even when the threatened attack never occurs.
Arrested and Assaulted While Reporting
The danger does not come only from private individuals.
The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker documents arrests, assaults, equipment seizures, subpoenas, border stops and other incidents involving journalists across the United States.
In 2025, the Tracker documented at least 32 instances in which journalists were detained or charged while doing their jobs.
Nearly 90% of those cases occurred around protests opposing federal immigration enforcement and deportation operations.
Half of the journalists were also assaulted by law enforcement before or during their arrests, according to the Tracker.
During volatile demonstrations, reporters may be struck by crowd-control projectiles, exposed to chemical irritants, shoved, detained or threatened with arrest while attempting to document public events.
A press credential does not create a physical shield.
Reporters can face hostility from protesters, counterprotesters and police. They may be accused by opposing sides of supporting whichever group they happen to be standing near.
The result is that journalists can be attacked while documenting the public conduct of the institutions responsible for protecting public safety.
Legal and Economic Pressure
Violence is not the only tool capable of silencing journalism.
A financially powerful person or company can threaten litigation. Even a defensible lawsuit can consume years, legal fees and staff time.
Government agencies can delay public records, restrict access or investigate sources.
Cyberattacks can interrupt publication and expose confidential communications.
Advertisers can be pressured to withdraw support.
Anonymous complaints can be filed against reporters with employers, professional organizations or government agencies.
None of those methods requires physical force.
For a small newsroom, the cumulative pressure may be enough to end an investigation.
That is why press freedom cannot be measured only by counting journalists who are killed.
It must also consider whether reporters can work without being financially ruined, arrested, surveilled or frightened into abandoning legitimate questions.
Why Threats Against Journalists Affect the Public
A threat against a journalist is first and foremost a threat against a person
The reporter threatened may have children, parents, a partner, financial obligations and the same instinct for self-preservation as anyone else.
Journalists are not immune to fear because their names appear on articles.
The consequences can also extend to readers.
If a reporter abandons a story because of intimidation, the public may never know the truth or what the records showed.
A confidential source may stop communicating after learning that the reporter was threatened.
Other journalists may decide that the subject is too dangerous.
Officials or private organizations may face less scrutiny.
In that way, a threat can accomplish its purpose without ever being carried out.
Fear itself becomes a method of censorship.
That does not mean hostility proves that a journalist’s reporting is correct.
Evidence determines whether reporting is correct.
A newsroom must remain willing to correct mistakes regardless of who complains. It must also remain willing to continue accurate reporting regardless of who attempts to intimidate it.
How Responsible Newsrooms Respond
News organizations should not encourage reporters to ignore threats in the name of bravery.
Responsible journalism requires responsible security.
Potentially threatening communications should be preserved in their original form, including available headers, timestamps and attachments.
Editors should be informed.
Newsrooms should consider whether personal information about staff members or their relatives has been exposed.
Depending on the language and circumstances, law enforcement may need to evaluate the communication.
Newsrooms should avoid unnecessary direct confrontation with a sender whose intentions are uncertain.
They should also avoid publishing private identifying information that could worsen the danger without serving a clear public interest.
These measures are not evidence of panic.
They are a practical response to a profession whose history contains too many examples of threats that preceded violence.
The True Cost of Free Speech
Journalists do not prove courage by pretending they are invulnerable.
They prove their commitment to journalism by continuing to do their jobs in the face of danger.
Alison Parker and Adam Ward were conducting a community interview.
The Capital Gazette employees were working inside a local newsroom.
An ABC10 employee was standing inside a television station lobby.
Almerigo Grilz and Marie Colvin entered war zones.
Anna Politkovskaya and Daphne Caruana Galizia investigated alleged abuses of power.
Jamal Khashoggi entered a consulate to collect documents for his marriage.
Their assignments, countries and circumstances were different.
Each case demonstrates the same essential truth.
Journalists do not observe danger only from a protected distance.
They stand in public places. They examine records. They publish their names. They ask people to answer questions.
Most days are spent in the office, behind the safety of a desk, and the work day ends with an article.
On the worst days, a journalist never comes home.
Additional Reporting By: Michael A. Cook; CGN News Staff; Monica Steele; CNN; U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of California; Committee to Protect Journalists; UNESCO Observatory of Killed Journalists; U.S. Press Freedom Tracker; NBC News; The Telegraph; archived National Sun-Times reporting; PBS NewsHour; Center for Justice and Accountability; Secolo d’Italia; The New York Times; Lint Trap of History; and source correspondence reviewed by CGN News.