As Wednesday’s horrific mass shooting unfolded at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, media outlets and social media erupted with images, video and live tweets.
In a timeline reminiscent of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, we saw initial reports of shots fired inside a school, then a gradually escalating stream of information flowing from the scene as the scope of the shooting came into focus.
By late afternoon, the death toll had been announced: 17 dead, 16 wounded. Suspect NIkolas Cruz was in custody. The South Florida Sun-Sentinel updated its story this morning.
Much of the initial information came from the people inside the school itself. The internet was full of students live tweeting the situation, including Aidan Minoff (@TheCaptainAidan). The Miami Herald shared his story.
Aidan’s tweets also attracted the attention of the media, and he was immediately bombarded with requests to use this photographs, prompting this observation from Brody Logan, a sports anchor from Washington, D.C.:
There were also the predictable false tweets, so it was helpful to see posts like these from Jane Lytvynenko, a BuzzFeed reporter who specializes in fact-checking and debunking mis- and disinformation:
She later wrote a story compiling all of the fake tweets and explaining their origin. (By the way, The New York Times published an entire article about Sam Hyde last November after the Texas church shootings.).
A real test for the media came when videos started emerging from the students trapped inside the school. One in particular, where students could be heard screaming as the gunshots rang out, was often prefaced with warnings about its graphic content. But it also prompted this tweet from The Week national correspondent Ryan Cooper:
Speaking of videos, The Daily Beast did an entire story about the footage shot from inside the school during the shooting.
With all of that video coming out, this could an opportunity to explore whether or not using them was justified. Poynter’s Al Tompkins had a very thoughtful piece explaining the reasoning for showing videos with such strong content:
“Maybe, we could argue, that we should not shield the public from the violence. If the public, if elected officials saw the images as they really are, maybe we would have a more serious conversation about gun violence.”
“Or maybe, we should argue that showing the graphic images rewards the shooter and encourages others.”
He goes on to say: “If it is justifiable during the initial breaking news to show graphic disturbing images and video, the justification becomes less over time, as the details of the shooting becomes clearer. Just because you used the video once is not the reason to keep using it.”
One video not from the scene that resonated with people was this one, where former FBI and CIA agent and CNN analyst Philip Mudd breaks down in tears on Wolf Blitzer’s show.
Coverage of this shooting, as it has been before, was extensive, urgent and ultimately heartbreaking as more became known.
But one of the most disturbing parts of the day for some was this: This was just one of 18 shootings at schools that have happened since Jan. 1.
NEW THIS MORNING:
WordPress picks former NPR, NYT digital chief to run flagship commercial venture
From the start, the journalism sucked him in. A reporter at Newsday. Digital storytelling experimentation that began with a dial-up service, when digital was still called electronic publishing.
Now Kinsey Wilson, who helped bring digital change to USA Today, NPR and the New York Times, has been named president of WordPress' leading commercial venture, the company announced this morning. He’ll be trying to help writers, journalists and businesses worldwide get their message out.
“In many ways, I don’t feel like I’m leaving journalism at all,” Wilson tells Poynter's David Beard. “WordPress powers millions of news websites, many focused on local communities. I think it creates an opening to work with others to address what is frankly an alarming crisis in local journalism.”
Catch Beard's full interview, but first, here are the other stories that may shape your day.
Quick hits
DISMISSED: Tom Ashbrook is out as host of the NPR program On Point. An independent investigation found he had created a hostile work environment, but could not substantiate accusations of sexual harassment. The environment could not be improved with Ashbrook still around, says Charlie Kravetz, the general manager of WBUR, which produces the weekday program. “I recognize that we must do better in the future,” BU Today quoted Kravetz as saying. The radio show is broadcast to an estimated 2 million listeners on more than 290 NPR-affiliated stations.
PSST, THOSE 200,000 TWEETS ARE OVER HERE: NBC has created a database that “Twitter has tied to ‘malicious activity’ from Russia-linked accounts during the 2016 U.S. presidential election.” Ben Popken writes that “These accounts, working in concert as part of large networks, pushed hundreds of thousands of inflammatory tweets, from fictitious tales of Democrats practicing witchcraft to hardline posts from users masquerading as Black Lives Matter activists.” It wasn’t easy getting to the tweets, because Twitter deleted many of the accounts associated with Russian meddling, and the database itself requires a bit of an instruction manual to use. But it’s worth a look here.
MEANWHILE, THE INTERCEPT IS DOCUMENTING WIKILEAK MESSAGES: More good investigative work by Micah Lee and Cora Currier, who detail the intriguing direct messages that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was sending to his most ardent supporters about why he wanted the GOP to win the 2016 election. From their Intercept story: “But in the fall of 2015, Trump was polling at less than 30 percent among Republican voters, neck-and-neck with neurosurgeon Ben Carson, and Assange spoke freely about why WikiLeaks wanted Clinton and the Democrats to lose the election.” Of Hillary Clinton, he said: “She’s a bright, well connected, sadistic sociopath.”
NEW OWNER FOR THE BOSTON HERALD: Digital First Media has won the bidding for the newspaper with a $12 million package. Digital First, you may recall, is under fire for its relentless cutting at many of its media companies, including a brutal round just recently.
NYT EMPLOYEES VENT — THEN IT’S LEAKED. HuffPost’s Ashley Feinberg details a conversation on Slack, the work communication tool, in which several New York Times employees lamented the paper’s hiring of editorial section editor Bari Weiss. The conversation started out by weighing in on a tweet that Weiss had written about U.S. Olympic skater Mirai Nagasu that had drawn heat on social media. But then it quickly devolved into heated criticism of the newspaper’s management over the hiring of Weiss and over its attempts at diversity. It’s pretty brutal.
SELDEN AWARD WINNERS: Congratulations to Mike Baker and Justin Mayo, who were awarded $50,000 as recipients of the title honoring investigative journalism. The two were recognized for their work on the series “Quantity of Care,” which led to resignations and widespread reform within Swedish-Cherry Hill, a prominent neuroscience institute in Seattle.
‘REPORTING WHILE FEMALE:’ In its “Threats” package, the Columbia Journalism Review published this piece by Anne Helen Petersen exploring how the mere act of being a journalist makes women a target. An excerpt: “What begins as displeasure with a piece can escalate to confrontations that are chilling in their cruelty. Abuse and menace have become a way of life for women in journalism. But like so many things in women’s lives, the labor of confronting that menace is largely invisible.” It’s definitely worth a read.
New on poynter.org
- We were first to report that Nicole Carroll has been named the new editor at USA Today. Rick Edmonds has this nice interview.
- What does your ancient, but treasured, Hotmail email address signal to potential employers? Ren LaForme explored.
- You're a newsroom that wants to get into the event business. Better check out this great collection of advice in our Local Edition newsletter.
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Correction: An earlier version of this story misspelled Jane Lytvynenko's name.
