Letter from the Editor: Coverage of mass shootings evolves as newsrooms examine practices

Last weekend’s mass shooting at a Buffalo supermarket raised several questions for journalists who covered it, in New York and afar.

Initial wire dispatches mentioned the suspected shooter was white and the neighborhood of the store predominantly Black. The Oregonian/OregonLive’s reporting guidelines say to mention race only when relevant.

At that early point, at least in published reports, the apparent racist motivations of the suspect were not yet known, so we removed mention of race from The Associated Press article we had published on OregonLive. Moments later, the AP confirmed that investigators believed the suspect was motivated by racial hatred and had targeted a Black community. The fact the suspect was white and 10 victims were Black was now relevant to understanding the events and needed to be included.

Later that Saturday afternoon, news reports said a 180-page “white supremacist manifesto” from the suspected shooter had surfaced. National Public Radio has decided not to refer to such documents as “manifestos,” which lends a patina of importance to what are often incoherent ramblings. The AP moved away from the word “manifesto” as well.

A recent book, “A Field Guide to White Supremacy,” includes a section where the editors, Kathleen Belew and Ramon A. Gutierrez, suggest revisions to the Associated Press Stylebook, guidance followed by many newsrooms. The authors write, “We urge journalists and editors not to reprint or hyperlink these documents, but rather to seek expert commentary to read, decode, and understand them.”

Similarly, journalists and news editors have become wary of focusing on mass shooters, especially at the expense of the victims. Some newspapers have stopped publishing reports of mass shootings on their front pages. Other newsrooms limit the use of shooters’ names to keep the spotlight off of them.

After the 2015 mass shooting at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, the Douglas County sheriff called on the media to not use the name of the man who had killed nine people and then himself.

“Let me be very clear: I will not name the shooter,” Sheriff John Hanlin said at the time, during a news conference. “I will not give him credit for this horrific act of cowardice.”

The Oregonian/OregonLive tries to limit the use of a mass murderer’s name, but I do think readers are well-served by reporting that delves into the factors that may have motivated the crimes. Were there previous threats or concerning behavior? This is important to know, for instance, in the discussion around “red flag” laws, which allow courts to seize firearms in some cases.

Did the assailant fall prey to indoctrination through the internet? Did someone buy a gun illegally or stockpile ammunition? These facts, too, have public policy implications.

As more information became available, AP also shifted from describing the attack as “racially motivated” to calling it, flatly, “racist.” Such clear language serves readers.

Belew, an expert in extremist violence, argues against the myth of the “lone wolf” attacker, saying hate-based assaults are often part of a larger movement. “A history focused on perpetrators reveals that many of the purportedly inexplicable acts of violence in the present are motivated by a coherent and deliberate ideology,” Belew writes, citing the mass shootings at two New Zealand mosques.

Indeed, the suspected shooter in Buffalo appears to have been motivated by the racist ideology known as the “great replacement theory.” The Associated Press describes the conspiracy theory, “seeping from the internet’s fringes,” as “a plot to diminish the influence of white people. … both through the immigration of nonwhite people into societies that have largely been dominated by white people, as well as through simple demographics, with white people having lower birth rates than other populations.”

The AP seemed to scramble last weekend after readers on social media criticized the wire service for referring to the white shooter as a “teenager.” While accurate (he is 18), the description seemed to some readers at odds with descriptions of Black 18-year-olds, such as Michael Brown, as “men.” (Brown was shot to death by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014.)

In other words, did the choice of “teenager” in any way send the message that the perpetrator was a misbegotten youth rather than a stone-cold killer? The AP quickly deleted the reference and posted a tweet referring to the accused as a “man,” adding, “This replaces an earlier tweet that did not make clear that the suspect is an adult.”

I can see an editor working under time pressure choosing the word “teenager” as something out of the ordinary and worth highlighting. But editors looking more closely may see a pattern in the media of describing suspects in distinct ways — jumping to mental illness as an issue for a white assailant, say, while highlighting a Black perpetrator’s arrest history.

In a Washington Post opinion piece published last week, two academics reported on their research, which found “only about 10 percent of mass shootings were directly motivated by psychotic hallucinations and delusions.” In other words, mental illness is rarely to blame.

James Densley, criminal justice professor at Metro State University, and Jillian Peterson, associate professor of criminology at Hamline University, wrote that motivations can be opaque, but what is clear is the assailants want “to cause as much death and destruction as possible so that a world that had otherwise ignored them would be forced to notice them and feel their anguish.”

If mass shooters have a goal of publicity, we in the media have the responsibility – and the tools – to countervail them. As journalists, we should do everything within our power to minimize the violence.