California has experienced a recent surge in shootings and gun violence, as three mass shootings have occurred since Thursday in Santa Clarita, Fresno, and Paradise Hills. Across news platforms, the Saugus High School shooting in Santa Clarita has received in-depth coverage in comparison to the limited exposure and misinformation circulated in the reporting on the Fresno Hmong community shooting.
The Saugus High School shooting took place Nov. 14, in Santa Clarita. A student, on the day of his 16th birthday, used a concealed handgun to shoot five of his peers before turning the gun on himself. The coverage of this shooting began while the situation was still active, with news helicopters arriving on the scene before authorities were able to confirm the shooter’s death.
That coverage has remained consistent since last Thursday, with organizations like Forbes, The Boston Globe, CNN, and more posting updates throughout the week following developments on the Santa Clarita shooting.
CNN’s coverage on the Saugus High School shooting demonstrates the intensity with which this story has been investigated and covered, publishing stories ranging from an on-air interview with two survivors to a poem, written by a student at a neighboring school, which went locally viral following the shooting.
Now take a look at the media’s treatment of Sunday’s shooting in Fresno, during which at least two unidentified gunmen snuck into the backyard of a home and opened fire on 30 people watching football together, killing four and wounding six. The victims were members of Fresno’s tight-knit Hmong community of Southeast Asian immigrants. Although the tragedy received some initial national coverage, the extent of the reporting so far has been boilerplate summarization of the event, especially relative to the thoroughness of the Saugus High School shooting coverage.
Ben Miller, a freshman at USC double majoring in political science and chemistry, said he wasn’t even aware of the Fresno shooting because of the lack of coverage.
“I think that there’s somewhat of a disproportionate choice to cover certain stories and not cover others,” Miller said of the discrepancies between national and local coverage of gun violence-related incidents.
While there is still time for developments on the Fresno shooting to be reported, the already-reduced prevalence of reporting on Fresno’s shooting indicates that it is unlikely that the story will receive the same degree of coverage as the Saugus High School shooting.
“When there are young people who are shot, that’s certainly something the media pays attention to because young people are seen as innocent people, so they become innocent victims,” said Stacy Schoulder, an Annenberg professor and Emmy-award winning TV News producer. “Location, I think, is another factor because schools are thought to be, and should be, a safe place for children and students.”
Uncredible claims that the Fresno shooting was related to gang violence also contributed to the disproportionate coverage of this mass shooting.
Although the suspects remain unknown and there is no proven connection between the attendees of the backyard party and criminal organizations, there have been allegations that the attacks were gang-related. Fresno Police Chief Andy Hall has assigned an “Asian Gang task force” to help quell a perceived uptick in Asian gang violence and to stave off any such increase during the Hmong New Year, which takes place early December and is expected to draw a significant number of Southeast Asian tourists to the Fresno area.
The gang connection alleged by Fresno police forces, despite being vehemently denied by community leaders, could have a substantial effect on the way the Fresno shooting story is processed by the largely white, affluent mainstream media. Gang violence, although newsworthy, doesn’t occupy the same space in the public discourse as school shootings or terror attacks.
“The media is always gonna cover [a school shooting] because it’s the worst thing to imagine as an American citizen, that you could send your child off to school and they could not be safe there,” said Michelle Mankoff, a sophomore majoring in journalism. “I think that’s why the media tends to cover it more often than a shooting like this where more people may have died, but it doesn’t evoke the same amount of fear as it does when someone goes and shoots up a school.”
Stories related to gang activity have become more normalized in American media, as stories covering gang violence appear and disappear on a near-daily basis. Therefore, even though the allegations that Fresno’s shooting is gang-related have no backing, the prevalence of that narrative in early reporting may influence how that story is perceived by news outlets and the general public.
The third shooting, in which an estranged Paradise Hills husband killed his wife and three of his four children Saturday, has been similarly sidelined in public discourse. Although local news has maintained decent coverage of this shooting, this is likely due to the dramatic complications that have come out about the family since the shooting.
These details include the mother’s restraining order against the father, which went into effect just a few hours before the murders, the history of the father’s abuse against the mother, and the continued care of the only surviving child following the shooting, who is currently in critical condition.
Coverage of the Paradise Hills shooting largely stops at this familial drama and the story doesn’t appear to have anywhere near the same level of consistent reporting that the Saugus shooting story has received. It appears that Saugus, despite having fewer casualties than both the Fresno and Paradise Hills mass shootings, will remain the most prevalent in our collective discourse about gun control out of the three incidents.
“When you think about more private places, such as people’s private property and homes, those are places where domestic violence, sadly, occurs, and I think that’s where the media is really less inclined to do those stories because they’re people who know one another,” said Schoulder. “Sometimes they’re crimes of passion, and I don’t know what the value really is for people outside of those circumstances to see what happens inside someone’s home when there’s violence.”
Critical components of each of these stories, including the conditions of injured Saugus High School victims, the surviving child from the Paradise Hills shooting, and the identities of the gunmen from the Fresno shooting have yet to develop.
Given the recentness of these events, only time will tell how these stories will continue to be reported on as details develop.