If there’s a place that’s the opposite of a news desert, it is surely Providence, Rhode Island. Multiple news organizations have mobilized to try to keep up with developments in Saturday’s mass shooting at Brown University, where two students were killed and nine injured by a gunman who burst into a building where students were studying for final exams.
The student newspaper, The Brown Daily Herald, was pretty much shut down for the semester, but its journalists are working hard to stay on top of the story. Here is the Herald’s live blog. Also, the Herald covered a community gathering called by the Providence City Council that was originally intended as a Hanukkah celebration. The tagline for the reporter, Emily Feil, says that she’s a freshman and adds, “In her free time, she can be found watching bad TV and reading good books.” Your heart breaks.
In addition to the Herald, local news outlets covering the shootings include The Providence Journal; The Boston Globe, which has a robust Rhode Island bureau; Ocean State Media, the state’s public television and radio operation; WJAR-TV (Channel 10); WPRI-TV (Channel 12); WNRI Radio (1380 AM and 99.9 FM); the Rhode Island Current, a nonprofit digital publication that’s part of the nationwide States Newsroom; and GoLocalProv. If I’ve missed any, let me know and I’ll add them.
I was appalled at the number of news organizations that named the “person of interest” who was taken into custody and then released late Sunday after authorities determined that he had nothing to do with the shooting. If you search Google News for that person’s name, you’ll get multiple hits, including The Washington Post, NBC News and CNN.
Some outlets appear to have tried to cover their tracks by deleting their earlier stories. But a person of interest is not the same as a suspect, and he shouldn’t have been identified in the first place, especially given that his detention was attributed to unnamed sources. Here is an ethical perspective from a notorious case in New Haven, Connecticut, some years ago.
A terrible weekend
The Brown shootings took place the same weekend as a mass murder in Sydney, Australia, where what was reported to be a father-and-son team killed at least 15 people, with another 42 hospitalized. The killings were carried out at a beachside Hanukkah gathering, and they’re being investigated as as an antisemitic incident. There was at least one act of incredible courage, as a bystander identified as Ahmed al Ahmed tackled one of the gunmen from behind, suffering serious injuries as a result. Ahmed’s parents are refugees who had recently arrived from Syria.
Finally, we all woke up this morning to the news that filmmaker Rob Reiner and his wife, photographer and producer Michele Singer Reiner, had been killed in their home in the Brentwood section of Los Angeles.
It was a terrible weekend. Hold your loved ones close.
More: Rhode Island-based independent journalist Steve Ahlquist has been covering the Brown shootings.