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Journalists Can Do Better Covering Mass Shootings

Opinion: Sandy Hook was the start of misinformation running amok

10 years after the Sandy Hook shooting, Alex Jones is being held accountable for spreading conspiracy theories – but those sorts of lies now plague the US

One family’s epic fight against Sandy Hook conspiracies, Alex Jones, and those who deny their son ever lived

Sarah Palin, The New York Times and the Limits of Political Messaging

American support for conspiracy theories and armed rebellion isn’t new – we just didn’t believe it before the Capitol insurrection

How conspiracy theories in the US became more personal, more cruel and more mainstream after the Sandy Hook shootings

The Professor of Denial

Amanda J. Crawford is a veteran political reporter and literary journalist who joined the faculty of the University of Connecticut in 2018.

Prof. Crawford’s research areas include journalism ethics, media law, misinformation, and the role of journalists in a democracy. As an investigative reporter and creative nonfiction writer, Prof. Crawford’s work explores the intersection of literature and reportage.

A 2020-21 fellow at the UConn Humanities Institute, Prof. Crawford is writing her first book about the fight against misinformation after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012. She was awarded a SCHARP award from the university in 2019 in support of this project. She serves on the national board of directors of the Journalism & Women Symposium and is a research affiliate of the UConn ARMS Center and the Rockefeller Institute’s Regional Gun Violence Research Consortium.

Prior to coming to UConn, Prof. Crawford held faculty appointments in the School of Journalism & Broadcasting at Western Kentucky University (assistant professor, 2014-18) and the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism & Mass Communication at Arizona State University (lecturer, 2008-10). She worked as a reporter for Bloomberg News, The Arizona Republic, The Baltimore Sun and People Magazine. Her work has been published by many other publications including Businessweek, National Geographic, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Talking Points Memo, Nieman Journalism Lab, The Miami Herald, The Hartford Courant, Ms. Magazine, Huffington Post, Phoenix Magazine and High Times. She has also published in literary journals including Creative Nonfiction, Hippocampus Magazine and Full Grown People. Prof. Crawford was a 2007 finalist for the national Livingston Award for Young Journalists and has won numerous regional journalism and FOI awards. In 2018, she was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in nonfiction.

Prof. Crawford holds a Master of Mass Communication degree from Arizona State University. She earned her  bachelor’s degree from the University of Maryland, where she studied journalism and creative writing and was named the Outstanding News-Editorial Graduate. Raised in Appalachian Maryland, Prof. Crawford was the first person in her family to attend college and wants to help other first-generation college students and those from underrepresented communities succeed in academia.

Literary Journalism

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News Literacy

Misinformation

Journalism Ethics

Media Law

Conspiracy Theories

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Personal Website

UConn Department of Journalism Profile

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"Can Truth Triumph?" UConn Magazine, Spring 2023

A Sandy Hook survivor looks back and ahead as she graduates college

When it comes to reporting on mass killings, some in Europe take a different approach from Americans

Connecticut Briefing: The post-truth world

CT '24: Covering mass shootings

How can you guard against online misinformation? UConn professor offers tips

An impact America ‘can’t underestimate’: How news coverage of the Columbine school shooting created myths and martyrs

CT '23: Getting to the truth; where journalism goes from here

On Sandy Hook, Alex Jones says ‘they’ are coming for 1st, 2nd Amendment. Why experts say he's wrong

Mass shootings and misinformation (and the media's role)

PODCAST: The future of news

Connecticut residents organizing to support ‘People’s Convoy”’ of truckers headed to D.C.

Connecticut defamation ruling against Alex Jones reignites free speech debate

How newsrooms and J-schools are redefining 'objective' coverage

Professor Amanda Crawford talks misinformation and the ‘attack on democracy itself’

 UConn journalism professor Amanda Crawford poses for a photo in her office in Oak Hall on Feb. 21, 2023.

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Assistant Professor

UConn professor and journalist Amanda J. Crawford considers the misinformation that spread like wildfire after tragic school shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School to be "the first major conspiracy theory of the modern social media age." 

Ten years after 26 young students and school staff were killed in the massacre, the impact of that day in 2012 continues to reverberate in America today. 

 On this solemn anniversary, Crawford writes about the aftermath of Sandy Hook misinformation in a new essay for The Conversation:
 
Conspiracy theories are powerful forces in the U.S. They have damaged public health amid a global pandemic, shaken faith in the democratic process and helped spark a violent assault on the U.S. Capitol in January 2021. These conspiracy theories are part of a dangerous misinformation crisis that has been building for years in the U.S. While American politics has long had a paranoid streak, and belief in conspiracy theories is nothing new, outlandish conspiracy theories born on social media now regularly achieve mainstream acceptance and are echoed by people in power. Recently, one of the most popular American conspiracy theorists faced consequences in court for his part in spreading viral lies. Right-wing radio host Alex Jones and his company, Infowars, were ordered by juries in Connecticut and Texas to pay nearly $1.5 billion in damages to relatives of victims killed in a mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School a decade ago. Jones had falsely claimed that the shooting was a hoax. As a journalism professor at the University of Connecticut, I have studied the misinformation  that surrounded the mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, on Dec. 14, 2012 – including Jones’ role in spreading it to his audience of millions. I consider it the first major conspiracy theory of the modern social media age, and I believe we can trace our current predicament to the tragedy’s aftermath. Ten years ago, the Sandy Hook shooting demonstrated how fringe ideas could quickly become mainstream on social media and win support from various establishment figures – even when the conspiracy theory targeted grieving families of young students and school staff killed during the massacre. Those who claimed the tragedy was a hoax showed up in Newtown and harassed people connected to the shooting. This provided an early example of how misinformation spread on social media could cause real-world harm.   Amanda J. Crawford is a veteran political reporter, literary journalist, and expert in journalism ethics, misinformation, conspiracy theories, and the First Amendment. Click on her icon now to arrange an interview with her today.



UConn Expert, 10 Years after Sandy Hook, on the Lies that 'Plague the U.S.' 

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 Since December 14, 2012, the families of 18 children and six adults murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary School have been forced to live amidst a tidal wave of conspiracy theorists and their constant lies, threats, and harassment.

As lawsuits challenging some of the most vocal purveyors of that misinformation are working through the court system, the stories of the hardships faced by some of these families -- endured while they have tried to grieve their unimaginable loss -- have brought new attention to the profound and negative effects that the wildfire spread of misinformation has on the lives of the people most impacted.

 Amanda J. Crawford, an assistant professor with the UConn Department of Journalism who studies misinformation and conspiracy theories, offers the story of one family in an in-depth and heartbreaking, but critically important, story for the Boston Globe Magazine: Lenny knew online chatter about the shadow government or some such conspiracy was all but inevitable. When a neuroscience graduate student killed 12 and injured dozens of moviegoers with a semiautomatic assault rifle in Aurora in July, five months prior, there had been allegations about government mind control. When Lenny searched his son’s name in early January 2013, he was disgusted at the speculation about the shooting. People called it a false flag. Mistakes in news coverage had become “anomalies” that conspiracy theorists claimed as proof of a coverup. Why did the shooter’s name change? Why did the guns keep changing? Press conferences were analyzed for clues. Vance’s threat to prosecute purveyors of misinformation was taken as an indication they were onto something. But what concerned Lenny most was their callous scrutiny of the victims and their families. Some people claimed a photo of a victim’s little sister with Obama really showed the dead girl still alive. Others speculated the murdered children never existed at all. They called parents and other relatives “crisis actors” paid to perform a tragedy. And yet, they also criticized them for not performing their grief well enough. There were even claims specifically about Veronique. Lenny needed to warn her. “There are some really dark, twisted people out there calling this a hoax,” he told her. Veronique didn’t understand. There was so much news coverage, so many witnesses. “How could that possibly be?” “If you put yourself out there, people will question your story,” Lenny cautioned. Veronique thought he must be exaggerating a few comments from a dark corner of the Web. This can’t possibly gain traction, she thought. No, no, no! Truth matters. If I tell my story, people will be able to see that I am a mother who is grieving.   Amanda J. Crawford is a veteran political reporter, literary journalist, and expert in journalism ethics, misinformation, conspiracy theories, and the First Amendment. Click on her icon now to arrange an interview with her today.



UConn's Amanda J. Crawford on one Sandy Hook family's 'epic fight'

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Former Alaska governor and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin didn't cause the deadly 2011 shooting in Tuscon, Arizona, that injured Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, says former journalist and UConn expert Amanda Crawford in a new essay for Nieman Reports.  Palin is asking for a new trial after a jury in February rejected her libel lawsuit against the New York Times. Palin sued the newspaper after it published a 2017 editorial that erroneously claimed she was responsible for the shooting. The Times quickly issued a correction. 

 But Crawford says that, in her opinion, Palin has contributed to increased vitriol in American politics today, and that libel laws protecting freedom of the press need to be guarded:

 
 
Palin, the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee known for her gun-toting right-wing invective, is now asking for a new trial in the case that hinges on an error in a 2017 Times editorial, “America’s Lethal Politics.” The piece, which bemoaned the viciousness of political discourse and pondered links to acts of violence, was published after a man who had supported Sen. Bernie Sanders opened fire at congressional Republicans’ baseball practice, injuring House Majority Whip Steve Scalise. The Times editorial noted that Palin’s political action committee published a campaign map in 2010 that used a graphic resembling the crosshairs of a rifle’s scope to mark targeted districts. It incorrectly drew a link between the map and the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, the Democratic incumbent in one of those districts, while she was at a constituent event in a grocery store parking lot in Tucson less than a year later. I was a political reporter in Arizona at the time, and I remember how Giffords herself had warned that the map could incite violence. “We’re on Sarah Palin’s targeted list,” she said in a 2010 interview, according to The Washington Post, “but the thing is that the way that she has it depicted has the crosshairs of a gun sight over our district, and when people do that, they’ve got to realize there are consequences to that action.” In the wake of the mass shooting in Tucson, some officials and members of the media suggested that political rhetoric, including Palin’s, may be to blame. In fact, no link between the campaign map and the shooting was ever established. As the judge said, the shooter’s own mental illness was to blame. That is where the Times blundered. An editor inserted language that said, “the link to political incitement was clear.” (The Times promptly issued a correction.) This was an egregious mistake and the product of sloppy journalism, but both the judge and the jury agreed that it was not done with actual malice or reckless disregard for the truth. That’s the standard that a public figure like Palin must meet because of the precedent set in the Sullivan case and subsequent decisions. Even if Palin is granted a new trial and loses again, she is likely to appeal. Her lawsuit is part of a concerted effort by critics of the “lamestream media,” including former President Donald Trump, to change the libel standard to make it easier for political figures to sue journalists and win judgments for unintentional mistakes. They want to inhibit free debate and make it harder for journalists to hold them accountable. -- Nieman Reports, March 14, 2022   If you are a reporter who is interested in covering this topic, or who would like to discuss the intersection between politics and media, let us help. 

Amanda Crawford is a veteran political reporter, literary journalist, and expert in journalism ethics, misinformation, conspiracy theories, and the First Amendment. Click on her icon now to arrange an interview today. 


Journalism, Libel, and Political Messaging in America - UConn's Expert Weighs in 

Amanda J. Crawford discusses her research on the conspiracy theories surrounding the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting.

Want to hear more? Register for her fellow's talk, February 3, 2021 at 4:00pm: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/128511692933

Get to Know a Fellow: Amanda J. Crawford

2020–21 Faculty Fellow, Amanda Crawford on media mistakes and the conspiracy theories surrounding the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting.

Fellow’s Talk: Amanda Crawford

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