Last week's show was titled Again and Again, and it led with an essay about the then

latest devastating mass shooting and buffalo.

We combed through our archives for all those people we'd spoken to in the past about

the tropes and the mistakes that litter the coverage of these abominations.

We didn't gather new tape because, honestly, we'd set it all before.

And then it happened again.

I had hoped when I became president I would not have to do this.

Again, another massacre, the Valdexas, an elementary school, beautiful, innocent, second,

third, fourth graders.

August of 2019 was another moment when two shooting rampages occurred within days of each

other, one in El Paso, Texas, and the next in Dayton, Ohio.

At the time, Washington Post columnist Margaret Sullivan wrote,

When a mass shooting happens, even when it happens twice in a 24-hour period, even when

the death tolls soar into the dozens, we reflexively spring into action.

We describe the horror of what happened.

We profile the shooter.

We tell the story of the victim's lives.

We get reaction from public officials.

This difficult gut-wrenching work for journalists on the scene, and then there's the next one

and the next one.

If journalism is supposed to be a positive force in society, and we know it can be, this

is doing no good.

...