Chris Gloninger anticipated not each viewer can be receptive to his dialogue of climate change when he took over as chief meteorologist at Des Moines, Iowa’s KCCI. He didn’t expect he would need a bodyguard.
Gloninger, who had acquired an Emmy for his reporting on the subject over the course of his 15-year profession, weaved the subject into his forecasts. And as he anticipated, there was some resistance at first, with some viewers complaining he was politicizing the climate.
However a yr into the job, the amount of these hate mails started to extend—and one individual wrote “We conservative Iowans would like to give you an Iowan welcome you will never forget,” with a reference to the arrest of a person carrying zip ties, a gun and a knife close to U.S. Supreme Court docket Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s home.
“I expected pushback,” Gloninger informed NPR. “I just didn’t expect the magnitude and how quickly it went off the rails.”
That led to the bodyguards, employed by the station, to accompany Gloninger to and from work and on any reside distant broadcasts he would do.
“Journalists are expected to grow thick skin, but with each new e-mail, it became more difficult to recover,” he wrote in an essay in the Boston Globe earlier this yr. “Something had to change, but one thing was certain: I would not be deterred from addressing an issue I saw as an existential global crisis.”
Gloninger informed NPR the stress of the threats (together with different components) ultimately led to his decision to retire from the career fully after simply two years at KCCI. He’s now working as a guide targeted on local weather options.
The sender of most of the threatening emails, together with the one referencing the “Iowan welcome” pleaded guilty to third-degree harassment and paid $181 in fines and courtroom prices.
