Disturbing news this week out of Chattooga County, Georgia, where the wife of a county commissioner is accused of intentionally pouring pop over the head of a reporter in the middle of a county budget meeting attended by members of the public and other reporters.

In a video posted by AllOnGeorgia, the actual offense isn’t seen, but you can hear someone yell sarcastically, “Oh, that’s classy!,” while someone else yells, “She brought it on herself.” Witnesses told police they saw the woman pour the drink on the reporter’s head.

Per the Washington Post, the reporter, Casie Bryant, had perhaps been looking into a tip posted on social media that the county commissioner, Jason Winters, had taken a questionable trip to France. Bryant had posted on her own social media account before the meeting that Winters was about to speak to the public “fresh off his trip to Paris.”

After the incident, Jason Winters and his wife, Abby, went to their attorney — who also happens to be the taxpayer-funded attorney who represents the county — before telling police Abby Winters tripped and the drink was spilled by accident, according to AllOnGeorgia.

In the video of the incident, right after someone says Bryant “brought that on herself,” someone else asks, “By saying that he went to France?”

“Oh, yes, (expletive),” answers someone.

Abby Winters has been charged with battery and she’ll have her day in court. Maybe it really was an accident (though all publicly available evidence points to contrary), or maybe Bryant had committed some supposed slight against the Winterses unrelated to her journalism.

But the incident fits into an ugly pattern of increasing hostility against working journalists in this country, where the leader of the free world continually calls the media the enemy of the people.

The Post compiled a list of just a few recent incidents:

Last month, a Wisconsin county board considered a resolution that threatened journalists with criminal prosecution if they covered the results of a water quality study without publishing the county’s press release on the topic word-for-word.

In August, an Oregon county tried to sic the county sheriff on reporters who called public officials’ cell phones as part of an investigation by the Malheur Enterprise into county economic development projects.

In 2019, 36 journalists have been attacked across the U.S., according to the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker.

Certainly, hostility toward the press predates Donald Trump, and has been committed by representatives of both major parties and apolitical types, as well. Police clubbed journalists alongside protesters outside the 1968 Democratic convention, for example. The attack on Bryant is an echo of the time in 1972 when Jane Muskie, wife of Democratic presidential candidate Ed Muskie, “playfully” shoved a piece of cake into the face of Newsweek reporter Dick Stout, saying, “One good turn deserves another, eh, Dick?”

Also certainly, things are much better for journalists here than in war zones like Iraq or Afghanistan or in openly hostile nations like Russia.

But things are so bad in America now that Reporters Without Borders, an international press collaborative, downgraded the U.S. in its World Press Freedom Index to No. 48, calling this country a “problematic” country in which to work.

The ill treatment won’t stop working journalists from doing their job. See AllOnGeorgia’s story on the pop attack and the June 29, 2018 edition of the Annapolis (Maryland) Capital Gazette for proof of that.

But it could chill students from considering journalism as a career, and robbing journalism of that talent is almost as bad.

It has to stop.

Above all else, violence is no solution to any kind of disagreement, political or otherwise, and no reporter — and no politician — deserves to be manhandled or assaulted in any way.

When you run for office, you agree to open yourself up to critique and criticism from your constituents. You agree to be held accountable to those constituents for the dollars you spend, the contracts you sign, the relationships you have that may pose a conflict of interest.

The journalists working at your hometown paper, radio station, TV station, or news website are your constituents (and taxpayers), writing so the many throngs of your other constituents who can’t make it to government meetings and don’t know how to file an open records requests can know what you’re up to.

They deserve the same respect you’d give to any other constituent attending your meetings or asking you questions.

Justin A. Hinkley can be reached at 989-358-5686 or jhinkley@thealpenanews.com. Follow him on Twitter @JustinHinkley.