Karla's Kolumn

Covering a mass shooting

 


President Barack Obama, during his speech in response to the mass shooting at a community college in Roseburg, Ore., Thursday, said, “Somehow this has become routine.  The reporting is routine.  My response here at this podium ends up being routine.  The conversation in the aftermath of it.  We’ve become numb to this.”

He’s right, especially about the routine of the reporting. Or is he? It appears to be a change somewhat in the way some agencies are reporting about the shooter and even some news outlets. In a few of the recent shootings, and yes, there have been many already this year, some media reports, even after the shooter’s name is released in subsequent reports only refer to the shooter as just that “the shooter” or the “gunman” without using the name.

In the most recent shooting in Oregon, the sheriff’s department is declining to use the shooter’s name. According to the Associated Press, Sheriff John Hamlin said, “I will not name the shooter. I will not give him the credit he probably sought prior to this horrific and cowardly act.”

Media reports have identified the shooter.

Some have advocated that the media be like the sheriff and not release anything about the shooters. But for journalists that thinking goes against everything we are taught — to be specific, to tell the who, what, where, when, why and how. The first is the who. People want to know who; they need to know the who. They want to know the why, even if it’s hard to understand; they need to know the where, the when and especially the what.

But, is the media to blame for the mass shootings? For giving shooters their 15 minutes of fame? No. The person that is to blame is the shooter, who, as the sheriff said, committed an act of cowardice. The shooter is the one who made a decision to go and kill someone, or in the case of mass shootings, to go and try to kill as many people as they could. Most mass shooters end up taking their own life or being killed by law enforcement. They never witness their so-called 15 minutes of fame. So if that’s why they are doing it, the logic is flawed. But the logic is flawed if the shooter believes that killing a bunch of people will somehow right a wrong, fix an injustice, make that shooter feel better or whatever lame excuse the shooter has to commit the tragic, horrible, cowardly act.

There will be press conferences from the hospitals where the victims were taken, reports and statements from the shooter’s family, and comments from students and faculty at the college, as well as residents of Roseburg. There will be more to come as some media outlets, along with law enforcement, try to piece together the events leading up to the shooting, as they try to get into the shooter’s head, as they try to dissect his life.

There will be stories on each of the victims as well, who they were, what they did, what they were like.

Law enforcement can make conscious decisions not to release names. The name is public record and media have other sources to get the names. Even the sheriff said the coroner would be releasing the name. The name of any shooter will be made public. It will be reported.

The life of the shooter will be reported. It’s what we do.

The difference can be in how we present the information. Do we as the media present it to get the story out accurately and fairly, or does the media, especially the national media, present it in such a way as to grab ratings, with sensationalistic and eye-catching graphics.

The reason I work for smaller newspapers is that I like community journalism. There’s a different perspective in community journalism than you see with national, larger media. We don’t press people for a story, we respect when a family says they don’t want to talk, as we did recently with the DeNiz family after the shooting in Montana.

But the role of the media is to report the who, what, where, when, why and how. That role is not going to change, not matter how many mass shootings there are, no matter how tragic the story. We still have a role to play, we still have a job to do to let the people know what happened with as many details as we can provide.

The way to change how the media reports is to change what we report, meaning if we can stop the mass shootings, the media won’t be reporting them.

 
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