Journalists risk exposing victims of rampant gun violence to additional trauma with episodic reporting that lacks meaningful context and care for victims and their families, leaders of a Philadelphia advocacy group said.

“We see the solutions reporting; we see the community-based reporting; we see the special projects,” said Jim MacMillan, director of the Philadelphia Center for Gun Violence Reporting. “But we still just see too much harmful reporting. And that’s what brings us here.”

Addressing journalists gathered at the Crime Coverage Summit hosted by the Radio Television Digital News Association and the National Press Foundation, MacMillan said the center—launched in 2020—aims to bring more “empathetic, ethical and impactful reporting” to a plague that has ravaged much of the nation.

MacMillan was joined in the discussion by Yvonne Latty, director, Logan Center for Urban Investigative Reporting at Temple University; Jessica H. Beard, a trauma surgeon and public health researcher at Temple University’s Lewis Katz School of Medicine and research director of the Philadelphia Center for Gun Violence Reporting; and Oronde McClain, a gun violence survivor and newsroom liaison, Philadelphia Center for Gun Violence Reporting.

The session was preceded by the screening of “The Second Trauma,” a documentary led by McClain and directed by Latty, highlighting the often rushed and painful interactions involving victims and reporters.

From left: Jim MacMillan, Yvonne Latty, Oronde McClain and Jessica Beard. Photo by: BP Miller/Chorus Photography

“Journalists show up at possibly the worst day of a person’s life with our own narrow agenda, oftentimes never to return,” the documentary states. “We leave behind grief and fear; our reporting offers no hope and rarely any solutions.”

In a striking illustration of the problem, MacMillan presented a map of Philadelphia depicting where 15,000 people have been shot since 2015. Of those, he said, 20% died.

“And I just want you to know the intensity of the challenge that drives me and that faces all of us, and perhaps drives everybody you’re looking at here, and perhaps many of you,” MacMillan said.

“But it’s a dominant problem; it’s a dominant challenge for us here, right?”

Beard, the Temple trauma surgeon, lamented that policymakers have failed to address gun violence as a public health problem because the reporting has not offered that context.

“So, people don’t understand gun violence as a public health problem,” Beard said. “And why would they? If you turn on the evening news and you see an episodic crime report, you think that person had it coming, it’s their fault, it’s an individual level problem, and the police are the only people who can respond to this.”

Access the full transcript here.

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