The Philadelphia Center for Gun Violence Reporting, a project of The Initiative for Better Gun Violence Reporting, is a unique type of anti-gun violence program. Their main objective is to prove their hypothesis that changing the way gun violence is being reported can prevent gun violence. With extensive research, PCGVR has a focus on what is considered harmful reporting to the sensitive topic and practicing healthier reporting.
The founder, Jim MacMillan, has been around this type of journalism for a long time and is continuing to use his research and practices in hopes of making people report on gun violence the correct way. The former Pulitzer Prize winner focuses on strategic planning and coordinating the programs at PCGVR.
With experience at several big news outlets and teaching different courses at different universities, MacMillan’s expertise is a big reason to the progress made by PCGVR and the progress reporting has made when covering gun violence. MacMillan knows what goes into the process and what is considered results in this field.
What is proof that PCGVR is changing the way gun violence is being reported on?
Okay, so the thing about research is that it takes a long time, of course, right? So we’ve been at this for four years, from building the organizations, launching our program and I would say that as a sort of first positive sign, I think we’ve played a role in a movement that there, that we’ve worked with more organizations that have started to employ gun violence prevention reporters, as opposed to crime reporters, focus journalists who are focused on solutions rather than focused on the problem. That’s at the crux of the public health approach that we advance there is in Philadelphia WHYY had two gun violence prevention reporters, as far as I can tell, the first time anybody had that job title anywhere, I’ve taken a pretty good look, and now they have a senior gun violence prevention reporter and editor for a while.
Billy Penn, their news site had gun violence prevention on their homepage menu, along with news and sports there. There was a spike in shootings here during the pandemic and during the speak of during the peak of pandemic gun violence, they were leading with gun violence prevention news more often the trace, the only next the trace, the only national news organization focused on gun violence and prevention. They were taught they had a bureau in Chicago. They were talking about opening a Philadelphia bureau. We tried to convince them to do that here, and they did.
What are some of the most pressing challenges when doing the research on this type of topic and then coordinating with other journalists on how to better gun violence reporting?
Our director of research, Dr Jessica Beard, is also a trauma surgeon at Temple University Hospital. One of the busiest people one could ever meet is a trauma surgeon, and she found support from the stony foundation to conduct research work while working as our Director of Research at the Philadelphia Center for gun violence reporting, but that’s, you know, it’s, it’s generous, it’s priceless, but it’s temporary. So, conducting research in a sustainable way is expensive and demanding, and supporting that work is the biggest challenge within I’d like, in terms of the challenge of actually conducting that work. I’m not at the core of that.
I’m connected with the research team, but I’m not a researcher, and so that should be better to answer the questions of the demands of getting that work done, in terms of our relationships with partners. The biggest challenge again, has been meeting the interest, we’ve got more opportunity like we’ve got limited capacity. We’ve only got so many people in so many dollars and so much time. But we’ve taken our project on the road. We took our whole team to the University of Missouri a couple of weeks ago. Perhaps a month ago, and met 100 students and a dozen faculty members, and made presentations. And I think six classes, and there were five classes in a public event. And so the meeting, that meeting, the appetite is without it as the biggest challenge.
How do you approach planning these strategic initiatives that you guys have going on, and specifically, how do you make it possible in such a diverse and complex city like Philadelphia?
I’m not sure that Philadelphia is is uniquely diverse or complex, but complexity and diversity of communities are part of the challenge, of course, and we started from, I started from the very beginning by building coalitions with stakeholder groups, making sure that we had representation in all from all facets of the issue. So, we do this by collaborating with journalists, with researchers and with people who’ve been harmed by gun violence. People representing communities distressed by gun violence, we bring them together, we connect them with each other, we build relationships among them. And I think, I think that’s probably the key, the key to the success that we’ve had, the integrity of that collaboration.
What is it like having to build a connection with those who have been directly affected by gun violence to further your goals?
That’s the first thing that you have to remember. While I have some lived experience of my own, it’s nothing like what many of our friends and neighbors around the city have suffered, right and so, recognizing that, learning to take you know, what some might call a trauma informed approach, thinking first about what they’ve been through, thinking next you know about their needs and making sure to care for people above all.
How much does the role of the research group play in the progress of your goals?
It’s integral. So, for instance, our total curriculum right now includes a documentary on better gun violence reporting, a documentary called The Second Trauma. It’s about the harm done by news reporting, in some cases, to people already harmed by gun violence. That’s informed by, among others, our research director, we have developed a better gun violence reporting toolkit, a guide for a guide for report, for preventing harm or reporting, and that was led by our Director of Research in her stony Foundation fellowship.
And the third aspect of our curriculum is our gun violence prevention reporting certification workshop, again guided by our research, as well, as you know, by our community and by the journalists we work with. So, in order to prepare the reporting toolkit, we convened a workshop we call the Better Gun Violence Reporting Workshop in late 2022 bringing together state representatives from all of those stakeholder groups. I think there were 70 people that time, including a roughly equal share of journalists, researchers and community partners. So those, those are the three essentials. Elements in everything we do. Those groups are the three essential elements in everything we do. So, we can’t do this without the research. We can’t do it without the community, and we can’t do it without the journalists.
What have you found to be the main root in harmful gun violence reporting?
That’s a very good question. I don’t know that we I don’t know that I have an authoritative answer. Harmful reporting occurs when journalists who don’t understand the stakes and don’t understand the experience of survivors and co-victims mistakenly take action that they believe might be in the best interest of a community they don’t understand. And so, we know that. So here’s what we know this. Maybe this is a better way. Last year, we published a study called like, I mean nobody firearm injured people’s perspectives on the news.
And our research team conducted qualitative interviews with dozens of gun violence survivors here in Philadelphia, and they said that reporting on gun violence left them feeling scared, hopeless and dehumanized, that it did harm to their reputations, that it put them in actual danger, that in some cases, it led them to carry guns, and this endless research that shows that when there are more guns, there will be more gun violence and more gun death. So, why are journalists doing that? Because in my case, I feel I remember being led to believe that what I was doing was the best possible public service.
There was a and I don’t know the root cause, but I don’t know the root of this, but there was the conventional wisdom in 20th century newsrooms. Was the theory of the conventional sort of theory of change in journalism in 20th century newsrooms was that it was our job to go out and illuminate social problems, our news organizations would hold leaders accountable, and they would fix the problems, but they haven’t done that, and we’ve learned through our research, through our research now, something I’ve heard anecdotally for years, that our reporting was doing more harm than good.
So all I can really tell you is that’s what it was like when I started, and that’s what I bought into, because we learned a lot in newsrooms from and in my generation, it was the guys that came before me, you know. And if you wanted to advance in your career, if you wanted to be a an effective journalist, you learn from the people that came before you how to get more influence and do more good things, but I got some bad information, and I think lots of journalists are still doing harmful reporting with the best of intentions because of the same structural failure In newsroom education.
What has been some short and/or long-term solutions to reducing harmful gun violence reporting?
Well, we have, we have short term and long-term strategies that haven’t yet been proven to reduce, to reduce the harm, because this is still new work. But you know, some of our short-term strategies are just, you know, continuous communications, reaching out to journalists, visit visiting newsrooms, convening journalists at our events, learning from each other and taking those practices back to their newsrooms. We had some verification last year after our gun violence prevention reporting certification workshop, which was in late 2023 the association of healthcare journalists interviewed me along with a young journalist from Alabama, in Alabama who attended the workshop, and she talked about how she and another attendee that she met, were actually nervous about bringing him back to their newsrooms.
But when she got back and shared, shared our instruction, shared our learnings with their with her editor, that they not only that, her editor not only embraced it in her beat, but which was gun violence prevention reporting, or actually, I think, in her case, specifically, violence prevention reporting was the name of the job title, but the but the but embrace some of those harm prevention strategies and trauma informed reporting strategies across their newsroom. So, convening journals, one way or another, digitally or in person, is a short-term strategy. The long-term challenge is building this organization and movement to last and all, because there have been, there have been more than a few initiatives in gun violence prevention reporting that have been effective but not sustained in their news organizations.
How does partnerships with other newsrooms and journalists maximize your efforts on improving gun violence reporting?
So, they’re like parallel demands, actually, right? So, every single person who works in our organization or partners with our organization is deeply driven by gun violence prevention, by having a real impact. At the same time, I’m tasked with sustaining an organization, and when we’re all tasked with sustaining the movement, right? And so, how else do you do that but by building influence, by finding collaborators, by finding like-minded experts with the same concerns and it’s not that hard to find. The association of healthcare journalists based at the Missouri School of Journalism held a convened a summit on reporting on gun violence as a Public health issue in Chicago in 2022.
I think the Pointer Institute, the leading journalism ethics organization in America, has an online course on rethinking the crime beat, and it includes, we’re often part of the curriculum, but, they look at it more broadly and address issues that they look at and address additional issues, including the harmfulness of like mug shots and perp walks and things like that. But their work on gun violence is aligned with ours. I feel like there was another one that came to mind.
The TND radio, television and digital news Association and the and the national press forum held a summit here last January where they invited us to speak here in Philadelphia on, they called it a crime coverage Summit. Now for us, it’s kind of funny, because we don’t think of it as we’re trying to disrupt the idea that gun violence belongs in a crime beat. We think it’s it demands public health reporting, but we’ll, but we’ll take, well, we’ll join this conversation on rethinking the crime beat with anybody who wants to frame it that way as well.
So, it’s kind of like what I was saying before it’s movement building and finding, finding collaborators. And I feel like I’m leaving another one out there. So those are three big news organizations doing the same thing, and I’m sorry, yeah. I mean, of course, the Dart center for journalism and trauma at Columbia University has kind of written the book in trauma informed reporting in the past 20 years. And while we haven’t worked directly with them a great deal, I’m a former Dart center fellow, as are a couple of other people in our core network, but, but the but they inform our work as well. So, it’s in some cases, we’re building on the work of other organizations, and other cases, we’re collaborating with them. In some cases, I think we’re writing the book, and we’re the thought leaders in our specific niche.
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