Bring back the fair, unbiased coverage

The April 16 shootings at Virginia Tech were, statistically, the worst campus shootings in United States history.

Newspapers, as usual, were right on the scene. But they had several questions to ask themselves. Reporters considered what angles to focus on. Photographers considered what photos to use – an even more difficult decision once the “military-style” photos of the gunman surfaced. Designers had to find a way to arrange the copy. And managers were in the background, supervising it all. Overall, I think they did a good job.

Newspapers all over did their best to inform their readers what had happened and keep them abreast of new developments. Those in or near college towns also answered another question many had: “what if this happened here? Would we be prepared?”

I was in Southeast Missouri when the shootings occurred, on a weeklong internship at the Southeast Missouri newspaper for another class which I’m enrolled in. I first saw the update on the Internet, and then was glued to Web and television updates until I had to leave for my copy desk shift. At the newspaper’s afternoon budget meeting, there was no question that the article on the shooting would be the centerpiece that day – a decision that was made partially because of a lack of other good art, but more so, I believe, because it was the big, breaking news. We only hoped that we could use a draft of the story that would advance what readers had already read and heard. Since the paper is located just a couple of miles from Southeast Missouri State University, we also ran a local sidebar with information from the college about its preparedness for a similar accident on its campus.

Newspaper designs varied. One of the most touching designs I saw was that at the Virginian-Pilot. The front had a memorial ribbon in Virginia Tech colors, and then simply listed the names, ages and a small blurb of information about each of the victims. All of the newspapers on Newseum gave a reverent feel to the design the day after the massacre. It was later in the week, when the video sent to NBC by the shooter surfaced, that newspapers had tough questions to deal with. An overwhelming number of newspapers on Newseum used one of the shots – either with the guns pointed to the side or straightforward – as their main art. Some tabloid-style papers used the photo as the entire cover. The Columbia Missourian used neither. Granted, there was a fatal shooting in Columbia on the same news cycle. But I think the decision not to run the photos – especially on the front – would have stood regardless of this other news. In Friday’s design critique, we discussed the photos. And the class of designers overwhelmingly agreed that those photos have no place in a family newspaper. They can invoke a sense of fear. Those pictures very easily bring about questions from children that parents most likely don’t want to have to explain. We were all comfortable with giving a Web site where the photos could be found for those interested, since they were splashed all over the Web.

In the beginning of the Iraq War, journalists practiced the same characteristics I just pointed out that have been in the media coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings over the past week. They were reverent. They covered the war from several angles.

But those attributes aren’t so apparent anymore. Lost are the reverence and balanced coverage on the good and the bad in Iraq. At the beginning of the war, I would read every story in the New York Times headlines that were e-mailed to me every morning. I rarely read these stories in their entirety anymore. They are too similar to one another and often show a bias against the war – reporting the now-higher death toll or recent violence. I think these things are important to report. But why not show what is being done in Iraq to make it better? Show the good things the soldiers are doing and accomplishing.

The managing editor at the newspaper where I will work after graduation lost her son in Iraq last October. For many like her, covering the Iraq War as if it is just a big mistake makes it even harder for these grieving families. They’re basically being told that their son, husband, dad, brother or loved one died in a pointless war – that they died for no reason at all. But it was something the soldiers did believe in. I know that’s what gave the managing editor comfort – that at least her son died doing something he believed in and wanted to do since he was a small child.

I charge journalists, especially those in our graduating class who are about to enter the industry, to change this. Bring back those characteristics we saw in the beginning of the war and in the Virginia Tech shootings. We owe it to ourselves and our readership to be fair and balanced – because that is the basis of journalism.