Stoneleigh Fellow Jessica Beard is featured by Billy Penn for her groundbreaking efforts to deepen the media narrative on gun violence and educate the public on its root causes and solutions.
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.
