Small Victories

Reporters are rarely sympathetic figures, owing to all those bothersome questions, fake news conspiracy projects and sketchy table manners. On occasion, however, their fellow citizens treat them charitably, if not equitably. That those calls sometimes are made posthumously isn’t ideal, but free buffet vouchers probably aren’t in the cards. 

Jeff German

You may have seen the news item recently that a former Las Vegas politician and administrator was convicted of murdering a local investigative reporter in Sept. 2022. Longtime Las Vegas Review-Journal snoop Jeff German was stabbed to death outside his home after he wrote stories detailing the shady and shoddy conduct of Robert Telles, who oversaw a county administrative office at the time. We wrote about the murder in this space when it occurred because it was both alarming and peculiar. Reporters getting iced for doing their jobs is an outrage and an act more associated with authoritarian or criminal settings. 

German covered corruption and organized crime and scandal in Vegas for more than three decades. But it was a disgraced low-level bureaucrat who killed him, a jury ruled, which may be even more jarring. It’s like handling rattlesnakes your entire life and being taken out by a mosquito bite. Prosecutors produced surveillance video and DNA and physical evidence that put Telles near German’s home the morning of the murder, including parts of a disguise that were found cut up later at Telles’s home. 

Telles, for his part, maintained his innocence and wove a tale that a shadowy group that included former colleagues and a local real estate company hired a hit man and then framed him because he planned to make unpopular changes within his office. Telles’s attorney stopped short of peddling that theory and argued instead that there was insufficient evidence to convict. The jury disagreed, and Telles, 47, was sentenced to life in prison with possibility of parole after 20 years. 

Review-Journal executive editor Glenn Cook in a statement called the verdict “a measure of justice” for German and for all murdered journalists, which it is. Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson said that the verdict sends the message that “any attempts to silence the media or to silence or intimidate a journalist will not be tolerated,” which sounds good but is less enforceable. 

The truth is that reporters and journalists are no more protected or exempt from violence or bad actors than anyone else. This is as it should be, though the Framers thought enough of a free press to highlight it in Constitutional Amendment Uno. German was the only journalist killed in the U.S. in 2022, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, though at least 67 journalists were killed worldwide that year, most in war zones and while reporting on crime, corruption and authoritarian regimes. Reporters don’t ask for special treatment, only basic courtesy and an acknowledgement that their jobs are at times difficult and necessary. An occasional open bar would be nice, as well.