PROGRESS Co-Director Delivers Remarks at 79th EWA National Seminar

May 10th, 2025

On Friday, May 10th, PROGRESS Co-Director Woodie Kessel delivered remarks at the 78th Education Writers Association (EWA) National Seminar. Subject-matter expertise and recommendations were given in the session entitled "A Solutions Journalism Approach to Covering the Impact of Guns on Children." 

Dr. Kessel's remarks can be read below:

Morning. Thank you Alaina, Ruth and the Education Writers Association for convening this important conversation about gun violence, a uniquely American epidemic and the role of journalists.

I am also appreciative of being joined by two distinguished panelists John and Anthony from Milwaukee and Birmingham. 

Background on community violence and its impact on youth

How would report the news if there was a plane crash every day in America?

Tragically approximately 128 Americans die each day from gunshot wounds, nearly the equivalent of a plane crash every day.  In 2023, according to CDC 46,728 Americans died from firearm injuries; 58.4% by Suicide   27,300; 38.4% by Homicide 17,927; 1.3% Legal Intervention 604; 1.0% Unintentional 463.            

How would report the news if there was a school bus plane crash every day in America?

On average almost 18 children ages 0-21 died from gun violence every day in the United States in 2023.  Homicide accounted for 64% (4,140) of firearm deaths for children with death by suicide at 31% (2,026) and unintentional firearm deaths accounted for 3% (168). 

50 years ago I as a med student took care of an 8 year old shot by their little brother with a gun he thought was a toy.  Today I with my colleague Jo Richardson, co-direct PROGRESS, a unique gun violence prevention initiative reporting directly to the President of the University of Maryland, Darryll Pines as part of his grand challenge priorities.

Now gun violence surpasses injuries and death from motor vehicle crashes as the leading cause of death for ALL children in the United States; it has been so for black and brown children for several years.

Gunshot wound morbidity is nearly four times the number of deaths accompanied by both human and capital costs.

All across our country, schools, churches, mosques, synagogues, grocery stores, hospitals, malls, entertainment venues, nightclubs, neighborhoods, streets, malls, and homes are not safe places. 

In many areas, Children and parents fear even walking to school or playing in neighborhood play grounds!  Fear has become pervasive all across our country.

As a people we have become numb to the daily bloodshed nightmare, as a country we have become virtually criminally negligent; with deaths from preventable measles part of our collective gross negligence.  As a pediatrician, a dad, a granddad, as an American I am outraged, we ALL should be!!!

Gun violence is not just an emotionless statistical metric, but a personal tragedy for the victims, survivors, families, and communities and our country. 

Systemically, we know violence and specifically gun violence is associated with several upstream factors: racism; poverty; joblessness; food insecurity; untreated mental illness; ACEs; failure to navigate from the unrestrained 2^nd Amendment to valuing public safety – from excessive availability and access to firearms, ghost guns, and semiautomatic long guns to complacency for cherishing human life. 

We successfully reduced automobile fatalities with better education, roads, technology, laws, and industry assistance, why not with firearms?

Trustworthy data sources, research, and expertise

Nearly 30 years ago, in 1997 The Dickey Amendment to US omnibus spending bill mandated that "none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) may be used to advocate or promote gun control." This largely shut down research and scientific efforts focused on gun violence in the United States. 

Some two decades later, the then Trump issued administration language in a report accompanying the Omnibus spending bill clarified that CDC could indeed conduct research into gun violence, but cannot use government appropriated funds to specifically advocate for gun control by U.S. President Donald J. Trump on March 23, 2018. 

In 2020 the federal budget included $25 million for the CDC and NIH to research reducing gun-related deaths and injuries, the first such funding since 1996. 

Moreover, The White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention (WHOGVP) was established by President Joe Biden on September 22, 2023. He appointed Vice President Kamala Harris to oversee the WHOGVP and three subject experts to lead the work: Stefanie Feldman as director and gun violence survivors Greg Jackson and Rob Wilcox as deputy directors.

Within hours of the inauguration of President Donald Trump on January 20, 2025, the WHOGVP was shut down and its White House web page taken offline.  And many of the successful Community violence intervention (CVI) programs and GVP research funding have been rescinded either by executive action or eliminated in President Trump's “Big Beautiful Bill.” 

This bill also includes rescissions to Medicaid and mental health services, all the while we are experiencing an epidemic in mental illness among teens and young people. 

Just before coming to today’s session I logged into CDC, WISQARS - Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System / CDC WONDER -- Wide-ranging ONline Data for Epidemiologic Research to check on data availability - only 2023 is accessible. CDC’s The National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS) collects information about violent deaths including homicides, suicides, and deaths caused by law enforcement acting in the line of duty was still accessible with data thru 2022.

National sources of GVP data are cited Ed Sondik’s chapter “DATA ON GUN VIOLENCE: WHAT DO WE KNOW AND HOW DO WE KNOW IT? by former Director of the National Center for Health Statistics (1996-2013), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Department of Health and Human Services; “From analyzing trends in instances of gun violence to identifying how to reduce the death and injury toll, data provide the foundation of our knowledge.”

The Trace is an American non-profit journalism outlet devoted to gun-related news in the United States. It was established in 2015 with seed money from the largest gun control advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety, which was founded by former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg. See https://datahub.thetrace.org/data-library/?dir=desc&sort=date_updated&pg=1

In 2014, the Gun Violence Archive (GVA) is an American nonprofit group with an accompanying website and social media delivery platforms began reporting gun violence data by cataloging every incident of what it deems to be gun violence in the United States from local and state police, media, data aggregates, government and other sources daily key being news reports and police reports. https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/  METHODOLOGY & DEFINITIONS AVAILABLE AT: https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/methodology

Science-based evidence is available at such websites as:

Research Society for the Prevention of Firearm-Related Harms https://www.firearmresearchsociety.org/  hosts the 2025 National Research Conference for the Prevention of Firearm-Related Harms in November 19-21, 2025 | Tempe, AZ

Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions; https://publichealth.jhu.edu/center-for-gun-violence-solutions

BRADY, GIFFORDS, Newtown Action Alliance/Newtown Action Alliance Foundation, Sandy Hook CT; Grandmothers for Gun Responsibility https://thegrandmothers.org/leadership/

American Academy of Pediatrics; https://www.aap.org/en/advocacy/gun-violence-prevention/?srsltid=AfmBOorBNWYgSexs_u-a6kFsce1po5ZAreCAqYVGHGMXSYR9R7of0v8O

Prevent Gun Violence: Research, Empowerment, Strategies & Solutions (PROGRESS) https://bsos.umd.edu/academics-research/prevent-gun-violence-research-empowerment-strategies-solutions;

Story Ideas

Shootings and homicide, suicide, mass shootings and unintentional reports often lead the news cycles in all media.  The information presented to the public can be incomplete, sensationalized and misleading, typically failing to present an accurate contextual picture. 

In the case of gun violence, especially homicide and mass shootings, the media coverage tends to identify perpetrators and even implies that victims are somehow responsible for the violence. 

The evoked public response often involves fear, avoiding neighborhoods where the incidents occurred, blaming victims, and indifference or numbness to loss of life. 

The messaging often focuses on the event solely as a crime—an unlawful act punishable by government—and often obscures critical contextual factors e.g., the roots of gun violence: the challenges faced by people in neglected communities, i.e., poverty, poor housing, or joblessness, as they navigate a violent and traumatized landscape.

The objective factual basis of news is key regardless of the medium—newspapers, magazines, books, blogs, webcasts, podcasts, social media, radio, television, or the Internet.  Gun violence is always emotionally charged and its remedies are politically controversial. 

Journalists must be objective when interviewing sources, researching events, and reporting stories that inform—not persuade—the public; similarly, journalists must not traumatize victims or scare the community.

Fault, blame, alarm and sadness are often elements of reporting.  What incidents are reported or not, and how the narrative is framed, creates a focus on who, when, where, how and sometimes why. 

Reporting influences the public discourse by employing stated and unstated “definitions” of a problem, and its causes, moral aspects, and possible solutions. Reporting—purposely or inadvertently—may use provocative language, biased “expert” opinions, and unbalanced emphasis. 

That gun violence is the leading cause of death for children in America is just another oft-repeated statistic with little or no emphasis on accountability or mention of the ready availability of firearms. 

As a society, we seem not to be outraged by the fact that 18 or more children die every day from gun violence, simply because they have become numbers and are no longer children.

Moreover, lead stories on the nightly news often focus on community-level or street violence by Black and Brown youth depicted as criminal perpetrators with little or no coverage of factors such as the excessive availability of weapons or root causes. 

Mass shootings most often are lead “above the fold” news, in part because they involve four or more victims and take place in a school, church, grocery store, or other community setting; furthermore, such incidents usually involve an assault-style weapon with a large capacity ammunition magazine.  The horrific gravity and sadness of mass shootings is captivating, albeit briefly, but not very motivating to take action. 

In contrast, the personal pain of gun deaths by suicide is generally invisible, or simply dismissed as attributable to mental illness and not to the immediate accessibility and availability of the lethal means used (guns). 

Media coverage of violence often provokes prejudice by focusing narrowly on the details of the most extreme cases, reinforcing the sense that crime and violence are inescapable and unchangeable problems involving only “those” people. 

A more complete narrative suggests that gun violence is a result of intergenerational trauma and public neglect of Black communities. 

Journalists should seek to identify the news narratives about gun violence by engaging with community groups on how they would like to improve those narratives. This in research terms is adhering to the principles of design justice.  Something that PROGRESS is actively engaged in. 

While news coverage post-Sandy Hook, for example, shifted focus toward legislative solutions and public opinion, the media continued to neglect a public health approach to gun violence with the community, limiting the discourse on comprehensive solutions. 

There is little mention of things like the type of firearm used, or where the ammunition was obtained that may provide actionable interventions.

In sum, much of the news and research efforts disproportionately focus on school and mass shootings, despite the fact that these incidents represent a minority of overall gun violence cases. 

In contrast, suicide, homicide and chronic gun violence within communities receives comparatively less media coverage and focus within research efforts, potentially perpetuating a skewed understanding of gun violence, emphasizing isolated incidents over systemic issues. 

Engagement with the community and an examination of the lack of resources to go beyond a common gun shooting “script” that prioritizes the needs of the community over the details of the tragedy is essential. 

Final thoughts

Thanks again Alaina and the EWA for taking on gun violence reporting directly.

And thank you John and Anthony for what you do every day to prevent the gun violence!!!

Every society both ancient and modern has risen to the challenge of caring for our child let this generation not be the last.  It is said that, “if you save but one life, you save the world.”