Chris Gloninger expected not every viewer would be receptive to his discussion 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 received an Emmy for his reporting on the subject over the course of his 15-year career, weaved the topic into his forecasts. And as he expected, there was some resistance at first, with some viewers complaining he was politicizing the weather.
But a year into the job, the volume of those hate mails began to increase—and one person wrote “We conservative Iowans would like to give you an Iowan welcome you will never forget,” with a reference to the arrest of a man carrying zip ties, a gun and a knife near U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s house.
“I expected pushback,” Gloninger told NPR. “I just didn’t expect the magnitude and how quickly it went off the rails.”
That led to the bodyguards, hired by the station, to accompany Gloninger to and from work and on any live remote 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 year. “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 told NPR the stress of the threats (along with other factors) eventually led to his decision to retire from the profession entirely after just two years at KCCI. He’s now working as a consultant focused on climate solutions.
The sender of many of the threatening emails, including the one referencing the “Iowan welcome” pleaded guilty to third-degree harassment and paid $181 in fines and court costs.