Former CNN anchor Brooke Baldwin called out her former network for abruptly veering away from coverage on the school shooting in Parkland, Florida.
In a Tuesday piece for The Atlantic, Baldwin recounted her on-the-ground coverage of the Parkland shooting that killed 17 students in February, 2018. After holding a town hall with Parkland and Columbine survivors and coming into contact with the victims’ grieving families, a network producer notified her through an earpiece to travel to Washington D.C. to cover news about former President Donald Trump and the FBI.
“My producer assured me that we’d return to coverage in Parkland — but that right then — I’ll never forget it — ‘we have to break away to go live in Washington.’ But. But. But. Fourteen students were dead,” she wrote. “I stood there dumbfounded. A teacher from the school was just out of camera range, waiting to join me for a five-minute live interview.”
Uvalde, TX 💔 — to the TV news media: DON’T LET THE CAMERAS TURN AWAY. Here’s my piece published in @TheAtlantic: https://t.co/v9zFU44HqC
— Brooke Baldwin (@BrookeBaldwin) May 31, 2022
Baldwin said she “furiously” contacted her producers at CNN headquarters fighting for more airtime on Parkland, but to no avail.
“Soon after, I got my marching orders: Come back to New York. I knew what that meant. We were done,” she continued.
The former anchor warned that the recent mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, will die down in media coverage once a new story breaks. As the American public grows tired of hearing about the incident, news networks will end coverage of the story and issues surrounding mental health and guns in order to protect their ratings. (RELATED: Brooke Baldwin Moved To Tears By Emotional Message From Mother Of Parkland Victim)
“After a week or 10 days, the outraged public grows tired of hearing about the carnage, loss, and inaction,” she said. “The audience starts to drop off. The ratings dip. And networks worry about their bottom line. And while the journalists in the field have compassion for the victims of these tragic stories, their bosses at the networks treat the news as ratings-generating revenue sources. No ratings? Less coverage. It’s as simple as that.”
She further called on news organizations to assign reporters to a mass shooting as a beat in order to “specialize” and “dig deep” into the issue.
“News executives should spend what it takes to stay a little longer in these communities. Respect the wishes of the victims’ families, but tell that story in every show so that the audience can’t look away. I know that keeping crews in the field is expensive, but 19 children and two teachers? There is no higher cost than that.”