ad302410@ohio.edu
How do we, as ethical journalists, cover the deaths (especially of young people) while remaining respectful to the families and communities? How do we inform the nation of mass shootings in schools like in Columbine High School in 1999 and Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton, Conn. nearly a year ago without mistreating the people being directly affected? How do we know when the event has been covered and it's time to pack up and head back to the newsroom?
Journalists have been having this ethical dilemma since the beginnings of crime against young people.
The Beginnings
Scanning through the list of school shootings is interesting, though undoubtedly depressing. From the 1760s to the 1980s, Wikipedia includes a short description of the event, including the date. The descriptions are replaced by a table which includes date, location, deaths, injuries and a short description of the event. Until 1999, the deaths range from zero to six.
Then, the Columbine High School massacre jumps the table up to a jarring 15 deaths and 21 injuries.
Nobody in the world knew how to take such an unbelievable and horrifying event that left a town in utter shock. The mainstream media soon took over the story from the local journalists and exhausted the town. Meg Moritz would release a documentary a year after the incident on the coverage and what effect covering the shooting had on journalists.
Although the shooting at Columbine High School would change coverage of mass shootings, especially at schools, we as journalists still have a long way to go before we can confidently and respectfully cover these types of stories.
Coverage Now
With the approach of the first anniversary of the shooting that resulted in the deaths of 20 children aged 6 and 7 years of age, we can expect to see mainstream media adorned with page one headlines similar to those of Columbine's ten year anniversary.
The question now is what is appropriate to report. Some say that only the names of the victims should be reported, and the shooter's name or names should never be mentioned by the media out of fear of copycats, because they think it is giving the shooter recognition or because it is removing the attention from the victims.
Many articles discuss just that. A year after the Columbine, victims' families and the school held a press conference in which they asked news outlets not to print the names of the shooters at all. Although we need to respect the communities in which these tragedies happen in order to minimize the harm that was already done to them, can we even fully report a story if we don't include the names of the shooters? Can we get the information to the public if we withhold a key piece of the story, even if that piece is widely known and can be easily located with a simple Google search?
Usually the answer for publications is No. 1 outlier, CNN's Anderson Cooper, who decided to avoid using the name of the Newtown Elementary School shooter in order to keep the focus on the victims and their families.
Problems of Quick Technology
Now, with access to news at the touch of a button, the audience demands immediate and accurate information about what's going on. In my mom's car on my way home for winter break, my mom and I sat in silence listening to every detail of the Newtown shooting. We simply shook our heads, unable to comprehend what evil the world can offer, but we were also unable to turn off the radio.
We needed to know what was happening. And we needed to know five minutes ago.
The difference between good reporting and sloppy reporting comes down to facts. If the facts are wrong, who is going to want to listen to you? Fox News reported that 24-year-old Ryan Lanza was the shooter, that the shooter's apartment in Hoboken was being searched and that the shooter had confronted officials at the school a day before the shooting.
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| Screenshot via Poynter.org |
The three leads were wrong. The real shooter was Ryan's brother Adam. The shooter's apartment wasn't being searched; Ryan's apartment was being searched. The information that Adam had been at the school a day before the shooting was completely wrong.
The New York Times took a different approach entirely. Public reporter Margaret Sullivan kept a running blog almost as an apology to readers, explaining that false information does slip through the cracks. The blog was kept to correct wrong information as well as keep a list of articles related to Sandy Hook.
The solution is for stations, publications and news outlets to decide what their ethical stance is on coverage of school shootings and other crimes that involve young people. How they will cover the community, how long they will remain in the community, who they will interview and which lines to leave uncrossed in regard to getting interviews or an image? These are questions that must be addressed in an age in which shootings seem to be so frequent.
A journalist must conduct him or herself with integrity and openness when dealing with such sensitive and unbelievable tragedies.
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