“Murder the media,” was carved into a door at the U.S. Capitol, according to The Poynter Institute, a non-profit journalism school and research organization.

The U.S. Justice Department has assigned specific prosecutors to focus on rioter attacks on the press.

Forgive us if we take such violence against journalists personally.

Among the false narratives of recent times — not invented by President Donald Trump but certainly fostered by him — is that there is a vast left-wing media conspiracy to help rig elections, create American socialism and defile all that is right and holy.

There are partisan media organizations — the echo chambers of the left and right. They enjoy the same First Amendment rights that all people in America do, but they aren’t representative of the work of the vast majority of hard-working, local reporters who are your neighbors and fellow citizens.

In fact, most of the reporters we know are very moderate in their politics, and perfectly content not to allow it to interfere with their objective reporting of events accurately.

There are good reporters who identify as Republicans and good reporters who identify as Democrats. A lot of reporters identify as independents. We don’t check their voter registration when we hire them, nor should we.

Frankly, a good reporter is a person who likes to tell interesting stories accurately without any thought about whether it helps the right or the left. Partisans don’t enjoy the work and generally don’t last very long.

There is no “the media” in the imagined sense of an organized, conspiratorial, monolithic entity. The media is a competitive business of rivals. If one reporter doesn’t pursue a story because of its politics, he faces the worst fate in journalism — getting scooped by a better reporter.

Does bias sometimes slip into reporting? As in all human endeavors, it does. No one is more disturbed by it than good reporters and editors.

Is there an irritating attitude of privilege among some journalists at the top of the food chain? Yes. No one is more sensitive to it than the guy who’s keeping an eye on your property tax rates or letting you know why there were police cars in front of the house down the street.

Last year, 22 reporters were murdered while doing their jobs, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. More died in crossfire or on dangerous assignments. They are martyrs to a free press and a free society.

Here in the clearly marked opinion section of the Tulsa World, we scorn the fools who rioted at the U.S. Capitol not because they support Donald Trump, but because they rioted and desecrated a symbol of our nation.

It’s not surprising that such terrorists would call for violence against the media. Their lies won’t prosper in a world served well by a robust free press.

When alarms sound, first-responders and reporters run toward the emergency that everyone else is running away from. We don’t say it often, but it takes a special kind of courage to do that.

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