The city of Annapolis held a benefit concert featuring Maryland-bred rockers Good Charlotte to honor the five Capital Gazette employees killed in an attack in their newsroom last month.
Good Charlotte headlined Saturday's concert titled "Annapolis Rising: A Benefit for the Capital Gazette and Free Press & First Responders." Other performers include Dublin 5, Higher Hands and Clones of Funk.
Prominent journalists spoke between music performances at the event Saturday afternoon.
Elisabeth Bumiller, the Washington bureau chief of The New York Times, says the Times' office grew silent when they heard reports of the shooting.
She says the journalists slain in the attack were part of the community who "remind us that the work we do is so vital to our towns, our cities, our country and our democracy."
Martin Baron, the executive editor of The Washington Post, spoke of all five of the victims by name, and he described them as "friends of the people, the people of Annapolis and beyond.''
"Not one of them deserved to be seen as an enemy because of the profession they choose or the place they worked,'' Baron said to applause from the audience. "Not one of them deserved to be seen as an enemy by the man who killed them, and not one of them deserved to be called an enemy by anyone else, either: Nor does anyone else in our field deserve to be labeled that way.''
U.S. & World
News from around the country and around the globe
Baron added: "To demean people like these, to demonize, to dehumanize them, is to debase yourself.''
The day after the shooting, Trump said journalists shouldn't fear being violently attacked while doing their job. He also said the attack "shocked the conscience of our nation and filled our hearts with grief.''
The benefit concert was held a month after the June 28 shooting, which was one of the deadliest attacks on journalists in U.S. history.
Olivier Knox, president of the White House Correspondents' Association, told the audience the nearly 400 members of the organization stood behind the Capital Gazette. Knox also saluted first responders, who also were being honored by the concert. Knox said some reporters also run toward danger and face threats.
"Still, I divide threats against journalists into two eras: before Feb. 17th, 2017 and after Feb. 17th, 2017,'' Knox said. "That's because on Feb. 17th, 2017, the president of the United States, using his Twitter account, declared us enemies of the American people.''
The suspect, Jarrod Ramos, remains jailed on five counts of first-degree murder.
