Don’t Quit Your Day Job: Citizen Journalism

“Silence can become complicity in oppression,” articulated Carol Guzy, as her eyes, filled with compassion and wisdom, scanned the audience. A four-time Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist, she radiated ethos, and my fellow National Youth Correspondents at the Washington Journalism and Media Conference soaked up every carefully crafted word. She touched on what it means to wield a camera or a pen to fight for the things others would wield a gun to defend, and how personal values make the journalist, not expensive technology or flashy gimmicks. During the half hour she spoke I realized that the personal impact journalism has is just as important as the societal effect. Carol Guzy’s voice was shown in images of tragedy-stricken places: New Orleans in 2005, Haiti in 2010; mine is shown in the words I string together as I try to better understand the world around me.

Barbara Dority author of “The Columbine Tragedy: Countering the Hysteria”, illustrates how society becomes hysterical after a teen commits a mass school shooting. The Columbine shooting occurred April 20, 1999 in Littleton, Colorado. It was caused by two adolescents Eric Harris and Dylan Kledold, collectively killed 13 students and wounded 23 others. After the Columbine shooting, society looked in every direction for who is to blame for such a horrendous act of violence caused by teens. Dority expresses how society tends to panic, and take away the youths’ pleasures such as video games, music, and the very basic rights young people have. While society posit that media or Goth music is the catalyst for teen violence, it is not the media or Goth who are to blame for teen violence.

Dave Cullen in the book, Columbine (2009), asserts that the media created many of the myths which began to circulate after the Columbine massacre. Cullen supports his claim by explaining in detail what was happening at the time of the myths and using facts and statements to analyze how the media influenced the victims and their thoughts. Cullen uses pathos in order to establish the fact that the media was fabricating myths and warping people’s minds. The author’s purpose is to inform the reader that the media fabricated many of the myths so the reader knows why these tales are incorrect. The author writes in a formal tone for those curious about the events of that day and what actually occurred.

Amidst all of the violence surrounding not only the United States, but also the whole world, I felt like the July 7th Dallas Shootings interested me. The attack took place on a Thursday evening during a Black Lives Matter Protest. The protest came shortly after the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, and occurred in many major cities that evening. After reviewing many different stories from both CNN and Fox News, I found one article hours after the attack occurred and one about one week later. This story definitely had a large amount of coverage online, in newspapers, and on television. The content of information was similar, but the article published one week after the killings had more accurate information since more become known

Jonathan Schuppe, the author of “Charleston Victim’s Kin Says Trial Revealed ‘Radical Truth’ About Racism”, is an NBC News writer with expertise in the areas of criminal justice and urban issues. Schuppe has received the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award and has been nominated for a PEN Literary Award for one of his books, won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for breaking-news coverage, and was honored in 2008 with the Al Nakkula Award for Police Reporting. NBC News is a national broadcasting station that delivers international news to millions of people daily. News covered ranges anywhere from trending YouTube videos to national crises.

On February 7th, 2007 the most tragic United States mass shooting happened in history. 23 year old student, Cho picked up a Walther P-22 pistol and killed 32 people at Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg Virginia. This left the whole nation in shock leaving innocent students fearful , higher education administration astonished and families mourning the loss of their children. Cho was found guilty after submitting his own confession video to NBS news along with 28 gruesome photos and profane language over the murder of innocent students. As everyone in the nation mourned such a loss of university students, the question remains as to “why” this incident even occurred. Cho was arrested and immediately sent for additional investigation including

The Virginia Tech shooting was also one of the worst historical events in history that made me see things differently. On April 16, 2007, a shooting was occurred that not only changed the lives of the students, but also changed the way I see life. The reason was because one student had a mental problem which lead him to killing and hurting a lot of students. Mourning the losses of teachers, friends, and students, Virginia Tech is now forever changed, says one veterinary school spokesperson (Schultz, par. 2). It saddens me that a person would do this just to be famous or to cause physical and mental pain on innocent people.

On February 14, 2018, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School was yet another school added to the long list of schools in which shootings have taken place. The usual agenda after school shootings is to express sorrow, then proceed to argue over if it was time to talk about gun reform, or wait. This time, however, it was different. Students like Emma Gonzales and David Hogg used social media and news outlets to express not only their sorrow but also their outrage. From this shooting was the birth of March for Our Lives and The National School Walkout. The leaders of both events then used the platforms like Twitter and news media to spread ideology, awareness, and connectivity.

Imagine a scene of unimaginable terror: several college students are lined up against a wall and shot, sirens are blaring in the background, and people are seen crouching on floors in classrooms and dormitories in a futile attempt to escape the wrath of a crazed gunman, who also happens to be a fellow student. By mid-afternoon, even the sidewalks are stained with blood and the atmosphere is desolate and aberrantly quiet. Students gather in small groups, some crying while still others make an effort to console each other. Such was the scene on April 16th, 2007 on the campus of Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg, Virginia when Seung-Hui Cho went on a mass killing spree. In slightly under three hours, Cho managed to gun down thirty-three students and faculty members, injuring seventeen others in the process, before finally turning the gun on himself. It has been described as the deadliest shooting rampage in American history.

The documentary, “Pathway to Violence”, delves into the topic of mass murders, especially school shootings. Citing crimes such as those that took place at Columbine, Sandy Hook, and Virginia Tech, viewers are shown the inside view of the perpetrators. It is shown that offenders often display warning signs, which are commonly missed. The documentary offers not only a look at the perpetrators themselves, but also at the reformations that are necessary to potentially prevent these tragedies before they happen.

Rampage-style school shootings are rare and tragic events. Although measures of prevention have become more advanced, school shootings have increased in frequency over the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st. Here in the United States, they have become especially prevalent, with 63 shootings just this year (Acevedo). The aftermath of rampage shootings leaves gaping holes and questions in communities. People try to heal and seek closure at their own pace, but the biggest question most are left with is “why”? In Rampage: The Social Roots of School Shootings, Katherine S. Newman seeks to answer this question. She lays out her research and methodology for studying rampage shootings and comes to the conclusion that shootings are not spontaneous, but rather the build up of psychological issues and negative sociological situations within a student’s community that causes them to seek to regain power over their own lives through a rampage shooting. The story Rampage builds out of the narratives of shooters and their victims along with national data and trends is important because it highlights the places that our societies fail in providing a safety net for deviant students and their peers.

The Kent State shootings were a true American tragedy. The situation appeared to be taken somewhat lightly due to the ideology that the students were the “bad” people. I was baffled by the general public’s belief that these students deserved their fate. The women’s awareness that two of the students who had no inkling that the situation would escalate to that magnitude somehow deserved to die seems incomprehensible, moreover she then comments on the appearance of these students and the beliefs of her likeminded counterparts as contributing factors to their deaths.

Today marks an important reminder to our lives; On the day of April 16, 2007 a mass murder read. April 16, 2007 was a very terrifying day for all staff and students of Virginia Tech University, on this particular day a 23 year old student commits a serious crime that led to a large amount of deaths. This student identity was not revealed until further notifications were taken on regards of this issue. The incident is described as a student who enters Virginia Tech campus and is known to own two semi-automatic pistols which are a glock 9 and a walther P22 killing over 32 people and injuring many.Virginia Polytechnic University is located in BlacksBurg, Virginia. As not mentioned in the essay, the shooter was a senior who is majoring in english.

Is it the bowling? It must be the Video games? Michael Moore’s award winning documentary; ‘Bowling for Columbine’ explores the reason for the violence in America and the reason for the Columbine High school mascara. In April 1999 two students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold went on a shooting rampage killing 12 students and a teacher before committing suicide, Moore looks at the background in which the massacre took place and assumptions about related issues. Moore uses Bill Nichols’ four modes of representation; the interactive, expository, observational and reflexive to convey his viewpoint on gun control in America and the nature of violence in the United States of America.

As I read through Columbine by Dave Cullen, there were many aspects of this tragedy that made me feel sad, frustrated and angry about the events that led up to and occurred on that day. Columbine is something you have heard about, read articles about and seen how it has changed the public school systems since that tragic day occurred. You do not realize the true impact that day had until you read this book. It gives you a true prospective on the importance of school safety, police response, media response and cell phones usage during a crisis. Organizing to write this paper, it was hard to gather all my thoughts and keep my emotions in check when describing how the book made me feel.