This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2017, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

In this column two weeks ago, I listed instances of attacks on the First Amendment, including arrests of reporters, violence against protesters, and disturbing comments from people in power disrespecting free-speech rights.

After I filed that column, I decided to compile more cases of such threats — figuring I'd have enough examples in a month or two to fill another column.

It took about a week to fill the column — and the two latest examples go beyond theoretical or rhetorical threats to the freedom of speech, extending to actual physical violence against reporters.

On Monday morning, staff at the Lexington Herald-Leader, Kentucky's largest newspaper, found some of the building's outer windows had been shattered. Evidence indicated small-caliber bullets had shattered or damaged several windows. Luckily, no one was injured.

The other case received wide attention: the assault against Ben Jacobs, a reporter for The Guardian, covering the recent House election in Montana.

Jacobs was trying to pose questions to Greg Gianforte, the millionaire tech mogul running as the Republican in the special election to fill the seat vacated when Ryan Zinke became Donald Trump's Interior secretary. Jacobs went to Gianforte's Bozeman campaign office seeking comment on the just-released report from the Congressional Budget Office, which estimated some 23 million Americans would lose health care under the GOP-passed repeal of Obamacare.

Gianforte's alleged response, according to Jacobs, his audio recorder and a local Fox News crew nearby: to grab Jacobs and body-slam him to the ground, breaking his glasses.

Jacobs called 911, and the Gallatin County Sheriff's Office responded, citing Gianforte on a misdemeanor assault charge. (The sheriff there, it was reported, had donated $250 to Gianforte's campaign.)

The incident happened the day before the election, which Gianforte won over his Democratic rival, Rob Quist, by 7 percentage points. Gianforte apologized to Jacobs in his victory speech.

The win means Montana will be represented in the U.S. House of Representatives by an alleged perpetrator of assault, who supports the policies of an admitted perpetrator of sexual assault.

Many Montanans vote by mail, and a lot of them cast their ballots before the body-slam incident, so we'll never know if it would have changed the outcome. Probably not much, based on interviews reporters did with locals who endorsed the idea of roughing up journalists.

It was mildly amusing to contemplate the many petty ways the Trump administration showed its disdain of the First Amendment: a secretary of State who shut U.S. reporters out of a news conference in Saudi Arabia, a Commerce secretary who praised the lack of protesters in that same country (because such protests are punishable by death), guards for an FCC commissioner who rough up a reporter, or a White House that gave press credentials to the conspiracy-happy InfoWars.

But you know what they say: It's all fun and games until a future congressman (allegedly) choke-slams a reporter.

At the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, the author Sebastian Junger premiered a documentary he had directed, "Which Way Is the Front Line From Here?" It was a portrait of his friend, the combat photojournalist Tim Hetherington, who died from shrapnel that hit him in 2011 while he was covering the civil war in Libya.

Junger — who worked with Hetherington on the Oscar-nominated documentary "Restrepo," about life in a forward combat base in Afghanistan — used the occasion to raise money for a group he had founded to help combat journalists. RISC (Reporters Instructed in Saving Colleagues) provides first-aid training to freelance journalists, to teach them what to do in the critical minutes after someone is shot or hit by shrapnel.

Would reporters need such training if they were assigned a story in Bozeman? In Lexington? In Salt Lake City?

Once, a reporter might have been considered paranoid for asking such questions. But even paranoids have people out to get them — and so, it seems, do journalists.

Sean P. Means writes The Cricket in daily blog form at http://www.sltrib.com/blogs/moviecricket. Follow him on Twitter @moviecricket. Email him at spmeans@sltrib.com.