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MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
In Thousand Oaks, Calif., Wednesday, 12 people were killed in a Western-themed bar before the shooter is believed to have turned the gun on himself. It has become an all-too-common scene. According to Gun Violence Archive, an independent research group, there's been a mass shooting nearly every day for the last two weeks. NPR's Leila Fadel tells us what it's like to cover them.
LEILA FADEL, BYLINE1: It starts with a phone call - usually, in the middle of the night - and you know. You know that someone somewhere has chosen to kill a lot of people. Now your job is to go bear witness - to try to tell the world why, speak to grieving families on the worst days of their lives so that millions of people can mourn with them and know the beautiful details of what makes a person special and what families and loved ones remember about their relatives who were killed.
These days, it feels like it follows a familiar and heartbreaking script. First, the press conference where law enforcement officers tell their community what's happened and reassure2 residents, like Ventura County Sheriff Geoff Dean did this week.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
GEOFF DEAN: Tonight at 11:20 PM, the sheriff's 911 received multiple calls of shots being fired at the Borderline Bar and Grill3 in Thousand Oaks.
FADEL: The families scrambling4 to find out if their loved ones lived or died, like Marc Orfanos, whose son Telemachus, a survivor5 of the Las Vegas mass shooting, was at the bar.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
MARC ORFANOS: So we get up, and we're down there, there's police everywhere. All right? And one of his friends said, I think he got out, but I'm not sure.
FADEL: Ten hours later, they found out that, this time, he did not survive. Neither did Cody Coffman, Jason Coffman's 22-year-old son.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
JASON COFFMAN: My firstborn son (sobbing) - only him and I know how much I love - how much I miss him. Oh, son, I love you so much.
FADEL: Then there are the vigils.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED MUSICAL ARTIST: (Singing) Amazing grace, how sweet...
FADEL: The community uniting and comforting each other around a tragedy. And then it feels like it's inevitable6 that there will be the next mass shooting. Since returning to the United States from a foreign assignment, I've covered three mass shootings in just over a year. My colleagues and I share the responsibilities of documenting these horrific incidents, like NPR's Nate Rott, who's covered eight mass shootings for NPR.
NATE ROTT, BYLINE: The best word I can think to describe how I feel when I have to go cover one of these things is just deflated7. And I think the hardest thing recently has been this sense of inevitability8 that you hear from people when you're covering one of these.
FADEL: There's this feeling now, he says, that it's only a matter of time before it happens in your own community. It makes me think of working in Iraq. There were years where bombings were so common that we stopped reporting on incidents that took less than 10 lives. They weren't shocking anymore. They were a steady part of life. And, sometimes, that's how it feels with these shootings. And, as journalists, we always think about what information is important to tell the public. I know, as a human, I always want to know why someone does something like this. The why usually falls to NPR's Martin Kaste to look into. He covers law enforcement and typically is the reporter looking for all the information we can find about the shooter.
MARTIN KASTE, BYLINE: I'm getting really worried about that. There's research showing that talking too much about the shooter, talking about his motives10 can inspire other shooters.
FADEL: So, as reporters, we've started limiting the number of times we say the shooter's name, focusing on families, on victims, on policy debates. Of course, there is journalistic value to look at motive9. A person might be driven by some ideology12 - racism13, hatred14 of a specific group of people. But Kaste says, often, there is no why.
KASTE: A lot of times, these are empty gestures of violence that we should not dignify15 with the assumption that there is a reason behind it that needs to be discussed and shared with millions of people.
FADEL: There's also a helplessness to this work, says NPR's Hansi Lo Wang.
HANSI LO WANG, BYLINE: As a reporter, I wonder, does bearing witness and telling people around the country the hurt, the death, the destruction that people are feeling - is that enough?
FADEL: We all ask ourselves, is this our new normal - this inexcusable business of carnage? And will we be, or are we already numb11 to it?
Leila Fadel, NPR News.
1 byline | |
n.署名;v.署名 | |
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2 reassure | |
v.使放心,使消除疑虑 | |
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3 grill | |
n.烤架,铁格子,烤肉;v.烧,烤,严加盘问 | |
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4 scrambling | |
v.快速爬行( scramble的现在分词 );攀登;争夺;(军事飞机)紧急起飞 | |
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5 survivor | |
n.生存者,残存者,幸存者 | |
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6 inevitable | |
adj.不可避免的,必然发生的 | |
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7 deflated | |
adj. 灰心丧气的 | |
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8 inevitability | |
n.必然性 | |
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9 motive | |
n.动机,目的;adv.发动的,运动的 | |
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10 motives | |
n.动机,目的( motive的名词复数 ) | |
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11 numb | |
adj.麻木的,失去感觉的;v.使麻木 | |
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12 ideology | |
n.意识形态,(政治或社会的)思想意识 | |
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13 racism | |
n.民族主义;种族歧视(意识) | |
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14 hatred | |
n.憎恶,憎恨,仇恨 | |
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15 dignify | |
vt.使有尊严;使崇高;给增光 | |
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