US TV coverage of Las Vegas attack ignored gun violence solutions, report finds

[Judi Lynn]

Few segments in the first five days discussed gun policy, analysis shows
‘The gun debate never really happened,’ says Media Matters for America
Lois Beckett
@loisbeckett
Thursday 16 November 2017 09.44 EST

Despite intense television news coverage of mass shootings, the vast majority of segments about the Las Vegas attack included no discussion of gun policy or other solutions to America’s gun violence crisis, according to a new report from a liberal media criticism group.

An analysis of evening and Sunday news shows on three major networks, NBC, CBS and ABC, found that major news coverage of the attack on 1 October lasted only a week. And only a handful of segments during the first five days after the shooting included any discussion of gun policy or solutions.

“Conservative media figures will say, ‘Now is not the time to talk about gun policy,’ in the immediate aftermath of the shooting,” said Tim Johnson, who leads the guns and public safety program at Media Matters for America, which conducted the analysis. But reporting on the Las Vegas shooting dropped off so quickly, “the gun debate never really happened,” he said.

After an attack that left 58 people dead and hundreds wounded, with a gunman with dozens of weapons firing down from his hotel room at a crowd of people at an outdoor concert, there was a single day of coverage that included multiple segments that touched on gun policy and other solutions on the networks’ Sunday news shows, Media Matters found. Then the networks’ focus on the shooting dried up almost entirely.

More:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/nov/16/las-vegas-attack-tv-coverage-gun-violence-report