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記者女友直播遭槍殺　男友毅然從政推槍控法

It’s been three weeks since Vester Flanagan shot and killed two former WDBJ7 coworkers during a live broadcast in Franklin County, Virginia.

Hundreds of EIJ15 attendees gathered at the Orlando World Center Marriott Saturday for a panel discussion about the shooting’s effects on the journalism community. “I think what your ears heard and your eyes saw, your brain didn’t want to process,” Kelly Zuber, WDBJ news director, said to the audience.

Immediate effects fell on the WDBJ newsroom that day.

An employee  who was close friends and often played golf with cameraman and victim Adam Ward, was tasked with editing video footage that day, Zuber said. He watched his friend die eight times that day.

“That day felt like the entire journalism world was united,” Brian Stelter, panel moderator and CNN correspondent, said. “It felt like we lost two family members.”

Zuber said the shooting thrust their station into a limbo between reporting as journalists and grieving as victims. Apart from heavy emotions, the crisis also signaled red flags about the reporting process. Authorities usually wait until a case is thoroughly investigated before releasing information, but as victims, the station received regular updates.

After reporting that officers found the alleged gunman dead in his car, Zuber was later informed that he remained alive with a pulse. Outside of the WDBJ newsroom, false rumors and information of the events and suspect began to quickly circulate online. Some suggested said Flanagan had shot the reporters as retribution for being fired two weeks prior, according to Zuber. He was actually fired more than two years earlier.

A number of social media posts defamed another reporter when it falsely accused him of being the shooter. Mark Luckie, author and former manager of Journalism and News at Twitter, said reporters and media stakeholders are responsible for curbing rumors. “What we can do is remember that simply retweeting something, or forwarding something, or passing it along – even with qualifications – is not reporting,” said Luckie.

Luckie said it’s important for the media to inform the public, even if that means saying that no real information is available. “Counter misinformation with information,” he said. Twitter doesn’t actively sensor content, and it shouldn’t, Luckie said. He cited positive movements born from social media coverage of tragedies, such as the Black Lives Matter movement. Zuber said there are still “We Stand With WDBJ7” photos across the walls of their newsroom. However, not posting graphic images might prevent the glorification of violence, even if that wasn’t the poster’s intentions, he said. Stelter said the same technology used to document joyous events, such as weddings, is also used by criminals to produce their own content. “It’s not enough to attack people, you have to record it as well,” he said.

Zuber said people in the newsroom accidently watched Flanagan’s point-of-view shooting video as they autoplayed on Twitter. “It was like it had happened in the newsroom,” she said. The Internet shares similarities with TV, such as viewers sometimes seeing images against their will, Stelter said. Zuber said the station no longer announces when it’s going live, which they’ve only done once since the shooting ­– in the safety of a fire department. She also said officers suggested keeping escape routes and considering protective objects to use as cover in mind such as news vehicles.

The station still receives threats from viewers who claim it staged the shooting, Zuber said, and half the reporters are uneasy about leaving the newsroom. “It was our sanctuary,” Zuber said. “It was where we could hold each other and cry.”

The discussion closed with questions from the audience, followed by a standing ovation.

For SPJ Director of Education Scott Leadingham, planning a conference is all about drawing from past experience.

“You kind of learn year after year about what works and what doesn’t, and what’s popular and what’s not,” he said. “When we schedule rooms, we look at what will probably be more popular, so we can schedule for bigger rooms. It’s guesswork. Sometimes it’s not as popular as we think, and sometimes it’s more.”

Attendees stand outside the crowded “News Content: What Works?” session.

At the afternoon “News Content: What Works?” session, it was standing room only, and some attendees were left on the outside looking in. As such, organizers suggest arriving to popular events as early as possible to ensure a spot in the audience.

“[Predicting the popular events] is always kind of hard to gauge, because with different groups, things are important to different people,” he said. “For NAHJ, for example, there will be a few sessions that are really big for that audience, but not for SPJ or other reporters.”

But that doesn’t stop the leadership from trying to predict popularity based on the timeliness of the topic—such as the Saturday supersession, “WDBJ Shooting: A Tragedy Unfolds In Real Time.”

“Another one, happening [Saturday] at 11 a.m. is the ‘Rape on Campus’ session, that involved the controversial Rolling Stone article,” Leadingham said. “This review will be done by Steve Coll of Columbia University. He’s going to be here to talk about breaking down the ethics of everything that happened with Rolling Stone. We assume that’s going to be a bigger topic.”

According to Leadingham, breakout sessions were shuffled to give more people the opportunity to attend. “‘A Rape on Campus’: Ethics, an Autopsy and Aftermath” is expected to be a popular session, as well as “Covering Ferguson and Baltimore.”

“It’s similar to one we did last year,” he said of the latter session. “It was a packed room. Granted, it just covered Ferguson last year. Now with Baltimore and the race relations issues that have popped up in the last year [and the issue of] journalists’ rights, that’s one session we think will be a good draw.”

Further, sessions involving digital media are typically given special attention in terms of promotion.

“For example, there’s this Sunday session about Google tools—free tools for journalists,” Leadingham said. “It’ll probably be pretty popular. It’s like catnip for journalists. Anything with the word ‘digital’ in the title, people will run to.”

But even popular topics tend to change over time, he said. A ‘Facebook for Journalist’ session would not have the same draw today as it would five years ago.

“Topics rotate out of popularity,” Leadingham said.

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