We in the news business are accustomed to covering tragedies every day. Shootings, riots, fatal wrecks, severe weather — anything that causes people to die before their time, we deal with it.

We may work a crash scene where there are multiple fatality tarps placed by first responders, only to find out those all were parts of one person. (This happened to me at a wreck so close to my office, I walked to the scene.) Or a firefighter carrying the badly injured body of a youngster whose home had just destroyed by an F4 tornado and the parents haven’t been found. Or a teenager who perished in a shooting, just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Covering these tragedies is part of the job of reporters and photojournalists, day in and day out. We sort out the facts, call the newsroom to talk with a copy desk or an assignment editor, and do a live shot if we’re in TV or file a quick hit on our website for print/digital guys. It’s just another day.

And we put what we’ve seen and heard into our little professional compartment, head back to our cubicle and quickly thank the Lord that it wasn’t us. It’s almost always “other people.”

Sometimes, though, it isn’t. We, the media, often think we’re somehow immune to these tragedies, or at least we’re hardened enough to not let the emotions get to us. But then suddenly it’s one of us, whether from our station or written-word outlet or from the competition, who’s under one of those tarps or covered head to toe on a gurney and being wheeled into a medical examiner’s van.

Yeah, we’re journalists — but that immunity thing? It’s a fallacy, or maybe we’re just lying to ourselves and won’t admit it.

And so we go to the scene and do our job. We file the stand-up, shoot some B-roll, maybe do a live shot for the 5:00 show. Or we grab the laptop, find a fast-food joint with decent Wi-Fi, grab some food and start writing a story or uploading still photos, making sure we write a headline that’s optimized for search engines to find it because that’s what our corporate office wants us to do.

And then suddenly, it hits us like a boulder.

This time, we’re writing or talking about someone we know. We may have just seen them at a press conference at the City Hall or — especially in Alabama — stood beside them on a high school or college football sideline on a Friday or Saturday. It may have been just hours before they died.

And suddenly, we start to cry our eyes out, or head to the state store and find the strongest bourbon that the Commonwealth of Kentucky’s distilleries can put in their barrels. And we realize that looking through a TV camera or sitting behind a story’s byline doesn’t make us immune from tragedy after all.

In Birmingham, we just had one of those moments.

Christina Chambers, a former sports reporter for Fox affiliate WBRC-6, was found dead in her home. She was the victim of a murder-suicide in which her husband was also found dead; who killed who doesn’t really matter. Their 3-year-old son was unhurt — at least physically. The mental scars will live with this young boy for the rest of his life.

The local media covered the crime scene and did their jobs as they always do. I can only imagine how hard some of the TV reporters had to work to fight the tears as they went on live shots.

Journalists are a tighter community than most viewers and readers probably realize, especially in a medium-sized market like Birmingham. Yeah, we all compete with each other to get the stories, though there are a lot more reporters working on the broadcast side than written-word these days, with no daily newspapers left in Birmingham. But when something horrendous like this happens to one of our own, even if it’s at a competing station or outlet, we all grieve together.

I didn’t know Christina that well personally. She usually worked sports games on the Over-the-Mountain side of the metro while the north side was my territory, and we might see each other at Hoover or Alabaster on occasion. But I know virtually all of the folks who used to work with her, and she was beloved by them for not only her professionalism, but also her kindness. She was also an accomplished runner and possessed a strong Christian faith.

Christina had left television to work as a broadcast media teacher for Thompson High School in Alabaster — a school about the size of a small college. She had a lot to offer those aspiring journalists. I wish them all well, but I also hope they learn that if they go into the news business as a career, they need to know that their reporting is not just death tolls in storms or bodies under tarps. They’re real people, with real families. I faced that very situation when I was just 18 years old, fresh out of high school and working for my hometown newspaper. A girl who had been my Glasgow High School (Kentucky) classmate just months before had died in a crash. My editor, Joel Wilson, assigned the story to me. I know he wanted a story for page A1, but I am pretty sure he wanted me to learn a tough lesson as well. And I did.

I live 240 miles or so away from my old Birmingham news media friends now, back in Kentucky where I grew up. But I can feel the pain in the messages they’ve posted online. It hurts — badly.

So today I ask you to remember in prayer Christina’s family, especially her young son — I can’t even imagine what he is experiencing right now. Remember also all those teenagers in her Thompson classes. And especially remember my old friends in Birmingham’s news media who worked beside Christina.

I’m not a drinker — alcohol has a very bad history in my family. But if I were, I would call a bar or two that I know in Birmingham and start a tab for Christina’s old media friends.

Sure, have a drink, but only as long as you raise a toast to Christina Chambers — one of the truly good people in our business.

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Robert Carter is a former reporter and editor who has worked for The Birmingham News, the now-closed North Jefferson News in Gardendale and The Hoover Gazette. Robert’s reporting has also been featured on BirminghamWatch. He now lives in Bowling Green, Kentucky.

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