It’s about three days after the mass shooting in an Oregon community college. I’ve learned not to trust much info that comes out in the first few hours following a tragic event like that. Journalists in that time are looking for info. They know as little as we do, and their role is to help us make sense of all the information – true and false, fact and supposition – that we’re barraged with early in the news cycle.
As we neared the 24 hour mark, details were jelling, opinions were flying, and political stances are being propped up. The problem with covering breaking events is the difference between FACT and What We Know Now based on how fast they might change.
Facts are things that are irrefutable: A gunman opened fire in a community college classroom. What we know now is often opinion, or even preliminary numbers before facts are truly known. Nine dead, ten dead, 13 dead… What we know now.
What we know now is subject to what can be confirmed and verified – once verified, they become facts. Early on, sense-making is hard for both journalists and for the public. Numbers aren’t confirmed. They might be facts, but in reality, those numbers may not even be What we know now.
Unfortunately, once we add in politics, sense-making suffers from political opinion and agenda setting.
In those first hours up to the day or two we heard many things. We heard a mix of facts, what we know now, and opinions about those bits of information. Opinions like: the shooter was “targeting Christians!”, or, when President Obama got in front of cameras and said it’s time to politicize tragedies like these.
Later on, we learned that he wasn’t shooting just Christians. It was more, according to several survivors,
However, another survivor, Rand McGowan, told his mother, Stephanie Salas, that Harper-Mercer was not specifically targeting Christians.
“‘Do you have a God? Are you Christian? Do you have a religion?’ It was more so saying, ‘You’re going to be meeting your maker. This won’t hurt very long.’ Then he would shoot them,
What we know now changed as more details came forth. “Targeting Christians” by asking about religion was what we knew early on. As more details emerge, sense-making began with more of what we learned later. More details, more reports, more context helps the rest of us make some sense of the tragedy.
In the middle of all that “what we know now…” information the media was reporting, the families and friends of the victims are still asking “why?” – “Why my son? … my daughter? … my husband? … my wife?…”
In the midst of all this chaos and opinion, we asked: why? Journalists and the public alike are trying to make sense out of tragedy.
I’ve seen a report of a hero, a 30-year-old Army vet who charged the shooter and received five rounds in his flesh for bravery… and two more because he told the shooter it was his son’s birthday. That little boy now has to ask why the crazed gunman gave him such a terrible birthday present. The little boy’s parents (the army vet, according to that report, is expected to survive) have to ask why they get to spend the next few years trying to exchange their son’s memories of the birthday from hell, back to one of family love and joy on that special day.
My liberal friends on social media where quick to bring out the facts that Oregon is one of a handful of states that legally allows concealed carry of firearms on campus, but no-one in the classroom – including the Army vet is reported to have returned fire. The sheriff of the county is reported to be one of the most outspoken law enforcement officers against gun control measures. Why don’t we have more gun control laws? Why weren’t more people armed on campus? Political agendas become the framework for individual sense making, as the details solidify and we move to making sense of Why? instead of What?
But, in the first 24 hours of a breaking news tragedy like this, when everyone is asking “Why?” reporters do what they are trained to do. They go out and find answers. Those answers may not be factual. Some numbers will change as victims succumb to their wounds. Occasionally, the wrong information gets out. Journalists are looking for facts, but most of what they find early on are the answers to What we know now.
Some stories don’t really answer “why?” Some just add to the list of things we ask “why?” about. Some stories answer “what, when, who…” but rarely do we find a lot of “why” early on.
Why isn’t totally about facts, or totally within the realm of what WE CAN KNOW NOW. Why is only factual in the mind of the perpetrators. We usually can’t make sense of the Why of a situation like this. When the perp becomes dead, those answers move from being able to be discovered as facts and into what we can make sense of.
Sense-making is the primary role of journalism in such situations. They attempt to assemble as much of the Facts, including the What We Know Now information for the rest of us to try to understand: Sense-Making.
Living in the world of What We Know Now isn’t always the best in terms of understanding a situation. In the weeks to come… the families of the victims – those who survived and those who died – will still be asking: Why my son/daughter/husband/wife? Journalists are going to try to find as many facts as possible. They will present them in the context they believe will help the rest of us make sense out of a senseless situation.
I learned in my time as a journalist that even in the role of sense-making where journalists try to give their consumers enough info in the context needed, we are still left asking: Why?
Journalist can never answer that question. Not to the satisfaction of the parent/child/spouse/friend of the victim. No matter how we as a society, or we as journalists frame the information – the question of why crazy people decide to kill other people has never been answered. Not well enough that our society can prevent it from happening again.
But, journalists keep asking the same questions, to understand, to inform, and to let us all have the discussion and debate we need to have. We hope to make sense of it all. But, despite all of the facts, and all of the What We Know Now sense-making, we always come back to the same question.
Why does this shit happen?