I’m not a big supporter of “the media” reporting on itself, but I found myself last week watching a brief video posted on Twitter that made me question news coverage of crime. The video was of a local TV news reporter in Orlando, Florida. She was in the middle of a live report outside of a hospital. She was struggling to composer herself, fighting back tears. She apologized for not being able to hold it together. She then says that a fellow reporter had died while covering a shooting earlier that day.
That reporter was Dylan Lyons. He was 24 years old, just a few years out of journalism school. According to local authorities, the suspect had been on what they called a shooting spree. Florida deputies say Keith Moses first shot and killed a woman at an apartment complex. Dylan Lyons and a news photographer went to cover that shooting. That’s when investigators say Keith Moses returned to the original scene and shot at the news crew. Dylan Lyons died. The news photographer was wounded but survived. Authorities say Moses then shot a woman and her daughter inside their home. The 9-year-old girl died. The suspect was arrested and is now facing multiple murder charges.
As I write this, I think of all the crime I’ve reported on, mostly in my past career as a TV reporter. I never felt in danger on the many crime scenes I was on, but I often felt frustrated because it usually was the case that I wouldn’t be able to get much information from police, neighbors or possibly family of victims while “reporting live from” the scene. And if I wasn’t getting meaningful information, was I really doing my job as a someone who is supposed to relay information? Did that do any service to the neighborhood or community where that shooting or crime took place? I’ve asked myself those questions plenty of times while covering crime. And as I watched a tearful reporter telling the audience that many like her go home every night afraid of the potential dangers in some assignments, those questions about the way crime is covered seem relevant. So, I took those questions to the chairman of the journalism department at Loyola University New Orleans, Michael Giusti.
