Above: Researchers participating in our collaborative gathered for a meeting at Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia last year. Photo by Kriston Jae Bethel for PCGVR.
New research from our interdisciplinary collaborative addresses media coverage of community gun violence now more clearly defines harmful news reporting practices.
The study included 21 experts — from the gun violence survivor community, journalism practice, and scholarship — who participated in a three-round anonymous survey; an iterative process through which they identified 12 specific harmful elements found in news reports, and then rated those harms across three levels.
The experts agreed on ratings — mild, moderate and severe — for each news content element across individual, community and society levels.
They determined that news stories including graphic content, episodic framing of individual incidents with little or no context, and those which do not explore solutions have the potential to cause severe harm at all three levels.
The panelists found that harmful elements were most detrimental to people who had survived gunshot injuries.
They also concluded that stories only or predominantly including the perspectives of law enforcement, and news reports missing the perspectives of people injured by gun violence or other impacted community members, can cause severe harm on some levels.
The findings are important because community gun violence disproportionately harms people from marginalized racial groups, and news reporting on gun violence can further exacerbate these harms. Reducing harmful news reporting can help address this health disparity and support evidence-based approaches to this urgent public health issue.
Further details are available in the research titled “Defining harmful news reporting on community firearm violence: A modified Delphi consensus study,” which was published in the journal PLOS One on Dec. 18, 2024. A Delphi consensus is a process designed to help a group of panelists reach consensus on a particular topic.
The study’s corresponding author is Dr. Jessica Beard, Director of Research at the Philadelphia Center for Gun Violence Reporting and a Stoneleigh Foundation Fellow. She also serves as Interim Trauma Program Medical Director at Temple University Hospital and Director of Trauma Research at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University.
Previous guidelines have been widely accepted for journalists reporting on suicide, mass shootings, sexual assault, abuse, and crimes involving minors.
Identifying specific harmful content in news stories about gun violence and developing reporting guidelines to avoid these elements can illuminate, though not fully resolve, complicated newsroom debates about how journalists can best balance their primary responsibilities to both inform the public and reduce harm.