Gun Control & the Media

I wanted to post some of my thoughts on gun control in light of the media reaction to the massacre at VT. In this first post, I'd to talk more about how the media reacted to the VT attack.

First, I want to say that overall, I thought that the media has done a good job covering the attack. They responded early, and they seemed to handle the interviews with victim's families and the injured in a responsible way. They also seemed careful in how they reported the initial facts, at least as much as can be expected in a tense and changing situation.

I strongly disagree, however, with the overwhelmingly rapid introduction of the gun-control debate into the situation. Within 10-12 hours, before any politician, victim, or advocacy group had sought to blame the situation on gun-control, the media began asking, was it because of a lack of gun-control? Right after the convocation ended I remember seeing anchors bring up that issue, again when not one victim, victim's family, or advocacy group had made a commentary. Nowhere in this initial reporting did i hear it stated "Victims are questioning gun-control laws," or "X organization issued a statement on gun-control."

I want to make a distinction here. I don't think it was wrong for the media to report where the subject received the gun, or that it was surprisingly easy; or to question, once they learned about his mental history, how he was able to obtain the gun and whether there was some violation of law. This is very different from a lot of what I saw, specifically the introduction by the media of the national gun-control debate into the middle of a tragic situation.

In the coming weeks experts and politicians will need to be discussing whether there should be changes in gun-control laws on a national or state level. But the media seemed to force the issue into the public debate before anyone else had said anything about it. That question was a media-driven question, and this to me seemed irresponsible. Imagine what the response would be if some leading presidential candidate had held a national press conference and blamed the tragedy on a lack of gun-control within 12 hours of the shooting. Would he or she still have any chance at all of being a contender? The media spurred this issue into the forefront, irresponsibly. Editorials should be left out of first-response reporting.

-James