One week ago today, Adam Lanza busted into the Sandy Hook
Elementary school armed with a Bushmaster assault rifle and two Glok pistols,
and he immediately shot the school principal and school
counselor.
He then turned and went down the hall until he found a room full of
six and seven year old students. With the precision of a gangland execution,
Lanza fired anywhere from 3 to 11 bullets point blank into EACH of the
children. When he was finished, the floor of the classroom was littered with 18
slaughtered children and two who were seriously wounded and would die later at
the hospital.
In all, a total of 26 people were killed at the Sandy Hook
Elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, before Lanza took his own life by
shooting himself in the head.
Just one week later the NRA (National Rifle Association) held what
it called a "press conference," but they didn't allow any questions to the
Executive Director Wayne LaPierre. LaPierre's big announcement was to hire
retired police officers and place them at EVERY school in the United
States.
LaPierre went to great lengths to avoid mentioning guns as the
cause of gun violence.
The only time LaPierre came close to mentioning guns, he said; "The
answer to a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun."
LaPierre went on to blame mental illness, video games, motion
pictures and TV shows and the music industry for all the violence in the
American culture.
Another unfolding American gun massacre has produced an avalanche
news coverage, but it's coverage that continues to omit crucial context about
gun violence and the
rash of often public shooting sprees that plague the
country. It's a troubling journalism trend, and one that seems to be getting
worse. As America recoils from new shootings, the news media are casting the gun
horrors in less context, not more.
It's true that the press is moving away from presenting shooting
sprees as isolated incidents. The coverage of the Sandy Hook elementary school
massacre in Newtown, Conn., has been rich with references to the Aurora, Colo.,
movie theater massacre from this summer. Then again, how can reporters
not connect the dots from those two rampages to a sweeping
cultural and criminal problem, and one that continues
to worsen and extends to all
corners of the country.
But simply acknowledging the deadly trend doesn't mean the news media are providing much-needed context. For instance, each year roughly 30,000 Americans die from gun violence. By comparison, since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, approximately 4,300 Americans have died in that conflict.
As Forbes' Rob Waters noted, from the period between 2000 to 2009, "If you exclude natural causes of death and consider only deaths caused by injury, [gun violence] is the second-leading cause of death over that time span; only car accidents (417,000) killed more people." And according to Bloomberg News, the number of Americans killed by guns will soon exceed the yearly number of auto fatalities, as auto-related deaths are falling and gun fatalities are rising.
To understand the larger story of gun violence in America, people have to understand the context. People have to be aware of the 30,000 figure. They ought to know, for instance, that that in the week since Newtown, an estimated 500 Americans have died from gunfire, and more than 1,200 have been wounded. They ought to know that just since the Sandy Hook School massacre, approximately 50 more American children and teens have died from gunfire.
If we don't understand the saturation status we're not going to understand the steady stream of public shooting sprees.
But news consumers aren't getting that information from the media - at least not in the wake of the Newtown tragedy.
Very few mentions of the 30,000 statistic have appeared in newspaper articles or on television segments about the Connecticut massacre. In fact, a Nexis search uncovers only two major newspaper news articles that referenced that key figure in the last week, one in the San Francisco Chronicle, on December 18, and one in the Hartford Courant December 19. (The Cleveland Plain Dealer, Tampa Tribune and Indianapolis Star published references to the 30,000-death statistic in opinion pieces about the Newtown killings.)
On television, the references were just as rare: I found only four. One each on PBS, CNN, NBC and MSNBC.
It's possible that a handful of additional newspaper news accounts and television discussions mentioned the fact that approximately 30,000 people die from gunfire every year. (Nexis transcripts don't capture every cable news segment.) But given the extraordinary amount of coverage of the Newtown shooting, the press had ample opportunities to highlight the 30,000 number. But these findings indicate that the references were quite scarce. In fact, they were even scarcer than when I urged the press to include crucial gun death context following the Aurora gun massacre in July.
Other key points that have been largely ignored in the Newtown coverage:
•There are huge economic costs associated with gun violence. For example, firearm-related deaths and injuries resulted in medical and lost of productivity expenses of about $32 billion in the U.S., according to most recently available data.
•Gun violence is among the leading causes of premature death in the U.S.
•Among the world's 23 wealthiest countries, 87 percent of all kids killed by guns are American kids.
The point here isn't to simply to wallow in a grim statistics. It's to illustrate how little context is included in the so-called 'gun debate' in this country. And especially the so-called gun debate that takes place in the media.
If that conversation is really going to happen it's imperative Americans understand what's at the center of the topic, and that sadly, this crisis extends far beyond Newtown.
Thanks to Eric Boehlert, Media Matters, for contributing to this article.
But simply acknowledging the deadly trend doesn't mean the news media are providing much-needed context. For instance, each year roughly 30,000 Americans die from gun violence. By comparison, since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, approximately 4,300 Americans have died in that conflict.
As Forbes' Rob Waters noted, from the period between 2000 to 2009, "If you exclude natural causes of death and consider only deaths caused by injury, [gun violence] is the second-leading cause of death over that time span; only car accidents (417,000) killed more people." And according to Bloomberg News, the number of Americans killed by guns will soon exceed the yearly number of auto fatalities, as auto-related deaths are falling and gun fatalities are rising.
To understand the larger story of gun violence in America, people have to understand the context. People have to be aware of the 30,000 figure. They ought to know, for instance, that that in the week since Newtown, an estimated 500 Americans have died from gunfire, and more than 1,200 have been wounded. They ought to know that just since the Sandy Hook School massacre, approximately 50 more American children and teens have died from gunfire.
If we don't understand the saturation status we're not going to understand the steady stream of public shooting sprees.
But news consumers aren't getting that information from the media - at least not in the wake of the Newtown tragedy.
Very few mentions of the 30,000 statistic have appeared in newspaper articles or on television segments about the Connecticut massacre. In fact, a Nexis search uncovers only two major newspaper news articles that referenced that key figure in the last week, one in the San Francisco Chronicle, on December 18, and one in the Hartford Courant December 19. (The Cleveland Plain Dealer, Tampa Tribune and Indianapolis Star published references to the 30,000-death statistic in opinion pieces about the Newtown killings.)
On television, the references were just as rare: I found only four. One each on PBS, CNN, NBC and MSNBC.
It's possible that a handful of additional newspaper news accounts and television discussions mentioned the fact that approximately 30,000 people die from gunfire every year. (Nexis transcripts don't capture every cable news segment.) But given the extraordinary amount of coverage of the Newtown shooting, the press had ample opportunities to highlight the 30,000 number. But these findings indicate that the references were quite scarce. In fact, they were even scarcer than when I urged the press to include crucial gun death context following the Aurora gun massacre in July.
Other key points that have been largely ignored in the Newtown coverage:
•There are huge economic costs associated with gun violence. For example, firearm-related deaths and injuries resulted in medical and lost of productivity expenses of about $32 billion in the U.S., according to most recently available data.
•Gun violence is among the leading causes of premature death in the U.S.
•Among the world's 23 wealthiest countries, 87 percent of all kids killed by guns are American kids.
The point here isn't to simply to wallow in a grim statistics. It's to illustrate how little context is included in the so-called 'gun debate' in this country. And especially the so-called gun debate that takes place in the media.
If that conversation is really going to happen it's imperative Americans understand what's at the center of the topic, and that sadly, this crisis extends far beyond Newtown.
Thanks to Eric Boehlert, Media Matters, for contributing to this article.
