Using a public health lens to guide the reporting is critical

“Surface-level coverage of shootings can perpetuate harmful stereotypes about victims and perpetrators, and completely fail to address the historic economic and racial factors that contribute to the crisis. By focusing on the problem without highlighting any solutions, news media contributes to the sense of hopelessness that causes many Philadelphians to tune out of the gun violence conversation entirely.

“I’m determined to do things differently.”

I wrote the above paragraph in June 2022, five months after taking a job as WHYY’s first-ever Gun Violence Prevention Reporter and two months after completing a “community listening tour” around Philadelphia. It was a chance to get to know Philly neighborhoods hardest hit by shootings, as well as the people living there and their efforts to improve public safety.

My position was the brainchild of former WHYY vice president Sandra Clark and former community engagement director Christopher “Flood the Drummer” Norris. They sought advice from Jim MacMillan at the Philadelphia Center for Gun Violence Reporting, an organization that researches the harmful effects of media on gun violence victims and their loved ones, and helps craft best practices to empower those residents instead. 

“Gun Violence Prevention Reporter” is a highly specific job title. It contains a promise to treat gun violence not as an inevitable social ill but as an urgent and solvable problem. My task was to cover shootings — specifically intra-community violence in mostly-Black Philly neighborhoods — as one might cover another public health issue such as COVID-19 or cancer. Identify root causes, target at-risk groups, take preventive measures and, hopefully, prevent spread. 

Publications across the U.S. have been trying to move away from traditional crime coverage and toward more nuanced, prevention-focused storytelling. AL.com now has a violence prevention reporter, and Amsterdam News has a gun violence reporter on its investigative team. NPR’s Gulf States Newsroom recently hired a senior reporter covering justice, incarceration and gun violence.  The Guardian continues to add to its “Guns and Lies” series, launched in 2019. 

2019 was also when the Kansas City Star made the unprecedented move to hire three reporters to cover gun violence full time. They called it the Missouri Gun Violence Project. Kaitlin Washburn was on that team, and spent two years covering mass shootings, domestic violence, neighborhood shootings and gun policy. 

“Gun Violence Prevention Reporter” is a highly specific job title. It contains a promise to treat gun violence not as an inevitable social ill but as an urgent and solvable problem. My task was to cover shootings — specifically intra-community violence in mostly-Black Philly neighborhoods — as one might cover another public health issue such as COVID-19 or cancer. Identify root causes, target at-risk groups, take preventive measures and, hopefully, prevent spread. 

Sammy Caiola

“I do give the Star a lot of credit for recognizing it before 2020, when we saw these massive spikes of gun violence happen nationwide,” she said. “And recognizing that there should be dedicated and in depth coverage to gun violence.”

Washburn now works for the Association of Health Care Journalists as the “beat leader” for gun violence and trauma. The organization offered a panel on the topic at its annual conference in June and has a ton of tip sheets and tool kits on its website. 

“They want to see health care journalists step up to this beat, and recognize that they really have a position here and an expertise that they’ve not tapped into very much,” she said. 

Beyond AHCJ, journalists have more opportunities than ever to learn about reporting gun violence as a public health issue. Poynter is offering a 23-week seminar on “Transforming Local Crime Reporting into Public Safety Journalism.” Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania has a gun violence prevention class. The Associated Press now has an entire chapter on criminal justice reporting in its stylebook, which refers to the Philadelphia Center for Gun Violence Reporting, the Marshall Project, the DART Center and the Poynter Institute as recommended resources.

Public health framing runs counter to more traditional crime reporting, which Temple University trauma surgeon Dr. Jessica Beard calls “episodic reporting.” Included in that umbrella are stories about individual shootings that “do not include context, those root causes and solutions that are so necessary for educating the public and reducing bias and stigma towards people who are shot,” according to Beard.

In her role as Director of Research for the Philadelphia Center for Gun Violence Reporting,  Beard laid out the need for prevention-focused gun violence reporting at the National Press Foundation’s Crime Coverage Summit in January.

“Gun violence is a human story, gun violence is preventable, and we have those solutions,” she said. “And so what if we could have reporting that included those solutions? What if we could educate the public on how we could stop gun violence? What if our stories could be part of gun violence prevention?” 

A recent analysis Beard conducted of Philadelphia news station clips found nearly 80% used episodic framing, more than half used law enforcement officials as a primary source of information (something people in communities impacted by gun violence say degrades trust and leads to inaccuracy), and 84% contained “at least one harmful content element” such as b-roll of a crime scene or other traumatic imagery.

Gun violence is a human story, gun violence is preventable, and we have those solutions. And so what if we could have reporting that included those solutions? What if we could educate the public on how we could stop gun violence? What if our stories could be part of gun violence prevention?

Jessica Beard, Director of Research for the Philadelphia Center for Gun Violence Reporting, Temple University trauma surgeon

Jim MacMillan, founder and director of the center, noted the involvement of “powerful institutions” that are “well positioned to help advance the practice.”

“I think it’s safe to say that the Kansas City project was a turning point in advancing this movement and helping to create a framework,” MacMillan said. “There’s more and more prevention reporting everywhere.”

The center hosted its first free training for gun violence prevention reporters in November and plans to host a second one this year. Reporters who are interested in learning some of the tips PCGVR shares can also look at the center’s new Better Gun Violence Reporting Toolkit, which contains a “Do’s and Don’ts” list for reporters as well as examples of “harmful/stigmatizing” versus “preventive” narratives. 

A few of those tips include:

When reporting on a shooting:

• Don’t discuss the disparate effects of gun violence without explaining the drivers of those disparities (e.g., structural racism).
• Don’t include the clinical condition of the victim(s), number of gunshot wounds, or the treating hospital, without first obtaining the consent of the victim(s)
• Don’t use racist codewords like “gritty” or “urban.”
• Don’t include graphic images of the shooting or crime scene.
• Don’t rely exclusively on police imagery.
• Do humanize victims and tell their stories via their own accounts or those of their close family/community members.
• Do explain what drives gun violence and frame it as a structural issue 
• In the case of a mass shooting, do emphasize that these events are rare.
• Do direct your audience to community resources.

During my time at WHYY I strived to make collaborative, community-informed journalism. That took the form of public events, a co-reported piece with WHYY’s community storyteller cohort, in-the-field solutions stories and a credible messenger reporting project. I highlighted Philadelphians who were forming street patrol teams, planting community gardens, connecting youth to jobs and paying homage to the slain. It was a privilege and an inspiration to be in their spaces. I spent the rest of that year covering stories that came directly out of community member questions and ideas. You can find some examples of that work here, here and here.

My hope now is to help other journalists approach gun violence coverage from a slower and more intentional place. Doing so has the potential to:

Here are some potential impacts of gun violence reporting from a public health framework:

• Connect gun violence victims and their families to needed resources
• Highlight victim experiences in a way that is accurate and empowering
• Elevate solutions to the gun violence crisis hitting cities across the U.S.
• Catalyze change by framing gun violence as a solvable problem
• Humanize communities impacted by violence who have historically been misrepresented by media
• Improve community trust in journalistic institutions 

Change is happening, hopefully with impacted communities at the helm. It’s time for major media institutions to join the fight.

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Cite this article

Caiola, Sammy (2024, July 11). Getting started with a gun violence prevention beat. Reynolds Journalism Institute. Retrieved from: https://rjionline.org/news/getting-started-with-a-gun-violence-prevention-beat/