Media errors and the ‘nutty professor’: Riding the journalistic boundaries of the Sandy Hook shootings

This study explores the relationship between social media and threats to journalism’s authority during coverage of the mass shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Two related threats are examined. One threat concerned widespread errors in early reporting of the shootings. A second threat came shortly after, in the aftermath of a communication professor’s blog claiming a conspiracy between media and government. Through textual analysis of news articles, columns, and blogs, the study considers the concepts of paradigm repair, boundary work, what-a-story news, and memory in the renegotiation of journalistic authority. Findings suggest that with increased reliance on social media for reporting, increased media errors threaten the boundaries of appropriate professional journalistic practice, which both mainstream and social media attempt to rebalance.

[1]  G. DeFriese,et al.  The New York Times , 2020, Publishing for Libraries.

[2]  Scott A. Eldridge.  Boundary Maintenance and Interloper Media Reaction , 2013 .

[3]  G. Muschert.  Frame-changing in the media coverage of a school shooting: The rise of Columbine as a national concern , 2009 .

[4]  Russell Frank,et al.  `These Crowded Circumstances' , 2003 .

[5]  Thomas R. Eisenmann,et al.  The Huffington Post , 2010 .

[6]  Dan Berkowitz,et al.  ‘The emperor lost his clothes’: Rupert Murdoch, News of the World and journalistic boundary work in the UK and USA , 2014 .

[7]  Shelley Wigley,et al.  Crisis managers losing control of the message: A pilot study of the Virginia Tech shooting☆ , 2010 .

[8]  Hsiang Iris Chyi,et al.  Media Salience and the Process of Framing: Coverage of the Columbine School Shootings , 2004 .

[9]  Elizabeth Blanks Hindman.  Jayson Blair, The New York Times, and Paradigm Repair , 2005 .

[10]  Kris Boyle,et al.  Comparing Type of Sources in Coverage of Katrina, Rita , 2009 .

[11]  Dan Berkowitz.  Cultural meanings of news : a text-reader , 2011 .

[12]  Dan Berkowitz,et al.  Community as interpretive community: rethinking the journalist‐source relationship , 1999 .

[13]  Dan Berkowitz.  Doing Double Duty , 2000, Science.

[14]  J. O’Sullivan,et al.  OLD VALUES, NEW MEDIA , 2008 .

[15]  Robert E. Gutsche,et al.  Drawing Lines in the Journalistic Sand , 2012 .

[16]  Gaye Tuchman.  Making News by Doing Work: Routinizing the Unexpected , 1973, American Journal of Sociology.

[17]  Thomas R. Lindlof.  Qualitative Communication Research Methods , 1994 .

[18]  Matt Carlson.  ‘Where once stood titans’: Second-order paradigm repair and the vanishing US newspaper , 2012 .

[19]  W. Bennett.  News, the politics of illusion , 1983 .

[20]  Shelley Wigley,et al.  Where Media Turn During Crises: A Look at Information Subsidies and the Virginia Tech Shootings , 2009 .

[21]  K. Voss.  The American Journalist in the 21st Century , 2008 .

[22]  Randal A. Beam,et al.  The American Journalist in the 21st Century : U.S. News People at the Dawn of a New Millennium , 2009 .

[23]  B. Zelizer.  Cannibalizing Memory in the Global Flow of News , 2011 .

[24]  Thomas A. Birkland,et al.  Media Framing and Policy Change After Columbine , 2009 .

[25]  Dan Berkowitz.  Telling the Unknown through the Familiar: Collective Memory as Journalistic Device in a Changing Media Environment , 2011 .

[26]  David Domingo,et al.  Weblogs and Journalism , 2008 .

[27]  Mark Coddington,et al.  Defending a Paradigm by Patrolling a Boundary , 2012 .