How Philly became ground zero for rethinking gun violence reporting

This is the first in a two-part series about Philadelphia’s role in shaping gun violence reporting across the country. This first installment focuses on the rising awareness of gun violence as a public health issue. The second installment highlights survivor and journalist voices and collaboration. 

Journalists who report on gun violence are swimming in uncharted waters, and a conference held last month in Philly dove headfirst into this rapidly changing environment, attracting nearly 120 journalists, scientific researchers, educators and survivors of gun violence to discuss the question of “What Now? Gun Violence Reporting in Unprecedented Times.” 

The good news: deaths by gun violence have fallen steadily to record lows since cresting during the pandemic. The city ended 2024 with the lowest number of homicides in a decade – and that same trend is echoed in cities across the U.S.

The bad news: disinformation, conspiracy theories and “vacuums of information” threaten to overwhelm and perhaps overturn that progress.

“Gun violence before this year was already one of the most complex, multi-faceted of topics, in this country in particular,” explained Jim MacMillan, journalist and founder of the Philadelphia Center for Gun Violence Reporting (PCGVR). “Now, events of the last few months have changed the demands on journalists.” 

“At the same time,” MacMillan noted, “it’s becoming more clear that the same things that worked for prevention last year will work this year. But we are dealing with journalists who are swimming in a completely unprecedented ecosystem of disinformation and changes.” 

Changing perceptions

Over the past decade, prevention work from experts and advocates has focused on finding and creating solutions, and raising awareness of the idea of gun violence as a public health issue, rather than as a criminal justice issue. Former Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy gave the issue a mainstream boost in 2024, but popular perception of and news coverage on gun violence has continued to focus on crime and high-profile shootings.

Dr. Jessica Beard observed the disconnect in real life through her work as a trauma surgeon with Temple University Hospital, leading her to dedicate her time and research into finding and promoting solutions-focused approaches that take into account community firearm violence, also known as interpersonal gun violence.

“I take care of people who are shot, so I am deeply invested in preventing gun violence. When I tried to read news reports about my patients and about gun violence more generally in Philadelphia, I learned about episodic crime reports framing violence more as a crime issue than a public health issue,” Dr. Beard said. “For the past seven years, [I’ve been] building research, evidence and recommendations for journalists to tell the stories better.” 

The resulting resources — a reporting toolkit, an online platform to connect journalists and survivors, formal training, a short documentary video, and a professional organization — are now proving foundational to the evolving national conversation around how gun violence is portrayed in news media. 

“A lot of research does exist when it comes to self-inflicted injury or mass shootings that can guide journalists to report on those events. But far less or nothing [is] out there when it comes to community gun violence,” said Dr. Beard, who also serves as director of research with PCGVR. 

On her and PCGVR’s work, “each step has been incremental. All the work has been collaborative with folks who we consider our community: People with lived experience, journalists, scholars. There have been multiple, different, great growing points where we’ve been able to identify needs.” 

After the Better Gun Violence Reporting Summit — hosted at WHYY’s offices in 2019 — focused on human-centered design, attendee feedback “identified a need for a toolkit, and also building connection between survivors and journalists,” Dr. Beard said. 

“And finally, a need for training,” she continued, noting the progression from the smaller program in 2019 to this month’s conference on the national stage. “It has been organic, but incremental, and we use research in the background to inform everything we’re doing. We add layer upon layer and it has been very collaborative with folks around the country doing the same work.” 

Evidence-based and solutions-driven

Since joining PCGVR, Dr. Beard has published dozens of research studies around trauma, gun violence, public health, the impact of media coverage on neighborhoods and people, and community-based violence — making her one of the country’s leading experts on these issues. 

Her research, and that of other health professionals, also had the benefit of being part of the boom in such work after the end of the Dickey Amendment in 2019. The law – passed by Congress in 1996 after years of lobbying by the National Rifle Association (NRA) – restricted funding for research into the relationship between gun violence and public health for more than 20 years. 

During those two decades, mass shootings – particularly at schools – skyrocketed, as did criticism of the Dickey Amendment and the NRA, decreasing public support and/or apathy to the amendment’s annual inclusion in government funding bills. 

When the restrictions ended in 2019, researchers rushed to make up for lost time. Still, the silence had a lasting impact and the legacy of sensational crime reports in media narratives (like the adage “if it bleeds, it leads”) remained. 

“One of the most exciting things today is the conversations people are having,” Dr. Beard told Billy Penn. “When I think about past conversations, these are really deep and nuanced down to the nitty gritty about how to make gun violence reporting better.” 

The biggest challenge now? “Getting the word out. Reaching journalists. Moving to a more national presence. And in the research, it’s sustaining the research and taking it to the next level,” Dr. Beard said.

Next up for Dr. Beard is completing a project “that looks at TV news reporting and the rate of harmful news content elements in the TV news reports. We’ve done a lot of work on that and putting that together and hoping to present it in some public health places and to journalists.” 

After that comes taking action in practice: “To work with journalists to create TV news reports that minimize harm. And test their impact on people with lived experience,” she said. “We’ve identified harms, want to support journalists to make better news reports, and then see how people respond to them.”

Part II in the series will be published tomorrow.

The post How Philly became ground zero for rethinking gun violence reporting appeared first on Billy Penn at WHYY.