John Temple on 'the limits of journalism' as news outlets mobilize to cover yet another mass shooting

Reliable Sources

CNN

News

3.4 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 25 March 2021

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The never-ending cycle of mass killing coverage has exposed the limits of journalism and "those limits are painful," veteran journalist John Temple says. Temple talks with Brian Stelter about his experience covering the Columbine massacre in 1999 and says "there was a sense that something would change" in the aftermath. Now, however, there's "this feeling that we're just going in a loop" after every tragedy, he says. Speaking in the wake of mass murders in Atlanta and Boulder, Temple talks about storytelling methods, the line between reporting and advocacy, and the moral dimensions of news coverage. He also points out that "the human cost on the journalists is enormous because it's day after day of grief." To learn more about how CNN protects listener privacy, visit cnn.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Last week, Atlanta, this week, Boulder, another week, another mass shooting in the news,
0:10.5	a mass killing with all the expected news coverage, all the claims from police, all the testimonials
0:20.5	from family members of the dead.
0:23.7	If you feel like nothing ever changes, well, that's because nothing ever seems to change.
0:29.7	Does this show the limits of journalism?
0:35.0	That's one of the questions for this week's Reliable Sources podcast.
0:38.2	So let's cue the music on Brian Stelter and this weekly podcast is our chance to go more
0:44.4	in-depth with media leaders and news makers.
0:48.2	Talking about the news, about the news, the story behind the story.
0:54.6	And I know many journalists, many television anchors, many members of the media who cover
1:01.6	these mass killings, who go to these crime scenes, who interview the loved ones of the dead.
1:09.8	They feel the repetition.
1:12.1	They feel what it's like to do this over and over again, to cover massacre after massacre.
1:23.4	John Temple wrote about this a couple of years ago for the Atlantic.
1:28.8	He wrote a column titled, I've seen the limits of journalism.
1:35.8	He said 20 years ago, I was convinced the shootings I covered at Columbine would change everything.
1:42.2	That's not what happened.
1:44.6	So I wanted to bring him on the podcast here to talk about those limits of journalism,
1:49.3	why they exist, and whether there are new approaches to covering stories that connect
1:55.2	with people differently, that there's a lot to dig into here.
2:00.7	So let's begin by bringing John in.
2:02.8	John is a Pulitzer Prize winning former editor and publisher at the Rocky Mountain News
	...

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