Philly news stations use harmful tactics to report on firearm violence, studies say

Stoneleigh Fellow Jessica Beard was featured by the Association of Health Care Journalists for publishing research on the ways news stations cover gun violence.

Two recent studies examining how local media report on gun violence revealed that Philadelphia TV news stations are failing to produce public health coverage of firearm violence. And they found that these stations routinely overreport on shootings involving children, mass shootings and shootings that happen in wealthier areas with majority white residents.

The studies — analyzing news clips over a six-month period in 2021 — were led by Jessica Beard, M.D., Ph.D., a trauma surgeon at Temple University and the director of research at the Philadelphia Center for Gun Violence Reporting. The research builds on Beard’s previous work and is partially funded by a grant from the National Institutes of Health.

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