A recent study clearly defined 12 harmful elements used when reporting on gun violence; rating them as mild, moderate, or severe across individual, community and societal levels.
News stories that include graphic content, use episodic framing of individual incidents with little or no context, leave out potential solutions, and rely only or mostly on law enforcement sources instead of impacted community members can cause harm on all three levels, the study determined.
Researchers also found that harmful news reporting was most detrimental to people who had survived gunshot injuries.
Why this matters
Community firearm violence “disproportionately harms people from marginalized racial groups. News reporting on [community firearm violence] can further exacerbate these harms,” the study authors wrote.
“Reducing harm from reporting on [community firearm violence] can help address this health disparity and support evidence-based approaches to this urgent public health issue,” the study authors added.
By specifically naming the harmful content in gun violence reporting, this study’s findings can help newsrooms establish guidelines that avoid those elements.
“Defining which specific content in [community firearm violence] stories is harmful and developing reporting guidelines can illuminate (though not fully resolve) complicated newsroom debates about how journalists can best balance their duties to both inform the public and reduce harm,” the authors wrote.
12 harmful elements
- Graphic content. The study’s panelists considered graphic content to include: images or footage showing the covered or uncovered body of a shooting victim, blood at the crime scene, the actual shooting incident, family and friends crying and an injured survivor.
- Clinical condition. The clinical condition refers to the severity of the victim’s injuries, whether in stable, fair, critical or severe condition.
- The number of gunshot wounds.
- Name of treating hospital.
- Relationship between the person shot and the perpetrator.
- Mugshots.
- Lack of a follow-up story.
- Episodic framing. Episodic framing means the reporting focuses on individual events or cases, rather than broader systemic issues.
- Only law enforcement narratives. Several panelists said that relying on law enforcement’s perspective encourages audiences to understand firearm violence as a “criminal legal” issue rather than a public health issue.
- Missing perspective of the person shot.
- Missing community perspective.
- Does not explore solutions. Panelists agreed that reporting on gun violence without providing context or solutions perpetuates negative stereotypes, reinforces fear and violence and dehumanizes the people injured.
The key takeaway
Journalists covering firearm violence should be aware of these harmful practices and actively avoid engaging in them. It will make their coverage better, improve the public’s understanding of firearm violence and minimize the harm poor reporting does to the communities most impacted by shootings.
Resources
- The Philadelphia Center for Gun Violence Reporting is a great resource for better gun violence reporting. Last summer, the nonprofit published a toolkit outlining how to report on gun violence. Beard has also previously studied the impacts of harmful reporting practices, which we covered here.
- The Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma is a go-to resource for reporters who cover traumatic events. Dart has an exhaustive list of topics related to trauma.
