FRIDAY, APRIL 20, 2007
Friday Edition: Are We Creating Myths in the Va. Tech Story?
Before we get into today's column, a quick heads-up: As your newsrooms
wrestle with ongoing decisions about how and whether to use the video,
audio and text sent by the Virginia Tech gunman, I hope you'll find
these
Poynter Podcasts on the topic useful.
The
Dart Center Web site has collected some valuable contributions from
journalists who have covered shootings like this one in years past. Journalists
note that often the stories that emerge quickly from such events turn out to be
wrong.
For example, it was widely reported, and is still believed
by some, that the Columbine shooters were targeting "jocks." The evidence,
freelance reporter David Cullen says, just does not pan out.
Cullen says we will never get the media to stop speculating
about Cho's profile completely, but there are responsible ways to channel it. Studies of
previous school shootings list several common
characteristics of attackers: 95 percent were current students, 73 percent felt
threatened and/or bullied, and 100 percent were male.
Steven Gorelick, professor of media
studies at Hunter College of the City University of New York, tells Dart:
Be very careful about the
experts you select as sources. These kinds of high-profile stories are magnets
for everyone from legitimate scholars and practitioners to self-proclaimed "profilers."
Serious
experts are almost always quick to admit that there is no easy explanation for
why and how something happened, especially before even the most basic
information is released. Beware of the expert source who is just dying to be
helpful. And perk up your ears when someone tells you: "I really need to get
more information before I have anything useful to say."
Scott North, reporter and assistant
city editor for The Herald (Everett, Wash.), adds:
In the
race to get it first, don't forget the long view. It often helps to think less
about gathering fact and more about creating relationships. Some of the best
stories won't be told for days, weeks, months or, in some cases, years.
People in
grief have long memories. You will want to be able to return to these people
when they are ready to tell you what they've learned, not just what they know.
The golden rule can't hurt you here. Approach people the way you'd want to be
approached. Give them the respect and space you'd expect in the same situation.
If they
talk with you, make this promise: No surprises. Read the quotes they've
supplied back to them. Summarize how you may use the information. Make sure
they have your contact information, and make sure you have theirs. The point is
to start a conversation, and to continue it as time passes.
10 Myths About School Shootings
In his latest piece for MSNBC,
Bill Dedman goes back to a 2002 study by the U.S. Secret Service and the U.S. Department of
Education. The researchers studied case files and other primary sources for
37 attacks by current or former students, and also interviewed 10 of the
perpetrators.
Among the 10 things Dedman reports:
- There really is no solid profile that applies to school shooters.
- Incidents like the
Virginia Tech shooting rarely involve people "just snapping." They are preceded
by a long period of planning.
- As we are seeing in the
Virginia Tech story, other people noticed the person's behavior long before the
attack. That is common in most cases of school shooters.
- Most attackers do no
threaten others beforehand, and those who do threaten usually don't attack.
- Attackers are not all
loners. In many cases of the past, attackers were active in school sports and
such.
- Only one-third of
previous attackers studied had a history of diagnosed mental illness.
- Most attackers had ready
access to weapons.
- Many attackers left
evidence of a long-held feeling of having been bullied or persecuted.
IRE's Resources for Covering What's Next
The Investigative Reporters
and Editors' Web site provides
great resources for journalists who want to go beyond the obvious to deeper
stories surrounding the Virginia Tech shootings. It includes links to databases from The National
Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting (NICAR). The NICAR databases are very
affordable (priced by market size) and are so valuable to have in your library
when big news breaks.
Stories From the Front Lines
This week, I have
conducted some interviews with journalists who are covering and coordinating
coverage for the Virginia Tech shooting story. My hope is that by reading these
interviews, you will be more prepared when big news comes to your town.
Here is an (edited)
interview I did with Matt Tansey of WSLS-TV Roanoke, 11 p.m., special projects, investigative producer:
1.) What has surprised you most about your
station's coverage of this story?
For me, it's the amount
of positive feedback we've received from viewers about the
compassionate and personal way our viewers perceive that we are covering
this horrific event. In my mind, we are
not covering this tragedy in
a way different from how we have covered major car crashes, weather-damage stories, etc. We normally cover these
events with what some would perceive as a more compassionate
approach. The story is not the blood
spilled, it's about the lives affected.
On a content scale, we
are putting out a lot more than we are normally capable of doing. We live streamed newscasts, our wall-to-wall
coverage Monday, ceremonies, and
a special show we put on at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday night on the Internet,
and simulcast much of Monday's work on our radio partners. This is due to the tremendous convergence
effort of Media General affiliates/Web
teams/newspaper partners, as well as working with our NBC Newschannel
regional producer, who flew in from a conference out west early Tuesday to
come in and help us out.
2.) What have you learned so far about covering a
story like this that the rest of us could benefit from?
Having a team(s) come in
from outside your market to help handle the story for other
affiliates really lets us focus on what we need to do to get information out to
our viewers in a timely manner.
The community also
played a big role in our coverage.
Throughout Monday, we got phoners
from students on campus, as well as e-mails, pictures, cell-phone
video that we could not have gotten without them. This incident shows the
growing power of community reporting and its relevance to current
newscast thinking/planning.
And do not overlook the
importance of setting up a place for people to call who want to talk
with someone. We used our 10 On Your
Side Helpline center to bring
in grief counselors for free help to anyone who needed it. Our phones rang seconds after we opened
them. They did not stop for hours
after. We also did this on Tuesday.
3.) How important have students/cell
phones/blogs/contributed video been to your coverage?
Student pictures and
cell-phone video played an important role in what we were able to put
on-air during our wall-to-wall coverage on Monday. Some of the first images
we received were from students showing police and ambulances on campus
in places they normally are not. Student
phone interviews on-air also
helped us provide situational context to our viewers. They could tell what they saw better than we
could.
Blogs have not been as
important. We normally do not use them
because of the difficulty in
verifying the information posted on them.
What we did receive hundreds of
(and by the time this e-mail is written, probably more than a
thousand) is e-mails from viewers expressing their feelings about what
happened. We chose to share some of
these on-air. We also did this during
the Sept. 11 attacks. It helps
humanize the event, so it's not
just a picture from a far away place.
4.) How easy is it for outsiders to contribute to
your coverage?
It depends on what is
trying to be "contributed." We
have a general news e-mail address that
is publicly available for anyone to send an e-mail or pictures
to. But just because someone sends
something in does not mean we will
put it on-air or online. We do have a verification process,
especially when it comes to sensitive subjects.
We also allow people to
post their thoughts on our Web site for public viewing. Those postings are checked by our Web team
before they are allowed to be put on our Web site for vulgarity and other reasons.
5.) What protocols, policies, authentication have
you gone through before you aired or posted outside content?
Without getting into
specifics, there are certain people who check through viewer
contributions before they are suggested to be put on-air or online. If something deserves additional
consideration (such as for verification purposes),
then we have no problem holding it until we can confirm the information.
6.) I imagine stories like this produce tons of
rumors and theories. How do you keep unproven, unsubstantiated
information off your air, considering that you are live for so long?
This goes to the heart of
our news team. We have an experienced
group of managers, anchors,
producers, and reporters who can sort through what they have confirmed and
what is speculation. If something sounds
a little unusual about a
piece of information, one of our team can usually discuss it with someone
else before it gets anywhere close to going on-air or online.
The shooting coverage
had two examples. During the wall-to-wall coverage Monday, we
received multiple calls and e-mails about two Asians with personal
pages on separate social-networking Web sites. Everything we received
was pure speculation that these two could be the shooters. They had taken pictures with guns and posted
them for public consumption. We even got a call from a supposed
"investigative reporter" who
"verified" that one of these two was the shooter. We did not put any of this
information on, because there was no evidence to corroborate the
speculation.
What we did was take
screenshots of the Web pages from the social-networking Web sites, in case we could later confirm the
speculation. These screenshots were
e-mailed to a few trusted employees for
safekeeping. At no time were there plans
to go on-air or online with
these. We have no problem not being the
"first on" when this type
of sensitive issue happens. It is more
important to get the information
correct and confirmed.
7.) Tell us what you can about the emotional state
of your newsroom. What are you doing to help folks?
Day One was mentally and
physically exhausting for many of us. I
really felt for our live crews,
because they had to fight a fierce wind storm. The shootings
overshadowed 50,000+ people without power due to powerful winds that blew in over
the weekend and continued on Monday.
Outside of our newsroom,
our HR department brought in counselors Thursday for the WSLS staff. Our management team has encouraged anyone who
needs a breather to call someone.
We are always looking for your great ideas. Send Al a few sentences and hot links.
Editor's
Note: Al's Morning Meeting is a compendium of ideas, edited story
excerpts and other materials from a variety of Web sites, as well as
original concepts and analysis. When the information comes directly
from another source, it will be attributed and a link will be provided
whenever possible. The column is fact-checked, but depends upon the
accuracy and integrity of the original sources cited. Errors and
inaccuracies found will be corrected.
Posted at 12:08:06 AM
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