A recent Café Society community discussion focuses on gun violence in Chicago and invites the community to analyze media reports covering the issue.

On a mid-July morning, news teams gathered in front of a red brick building in West Garfield Park to report the shooting death of 11-year-old Shamiya Adams . Cameras panned the wall, pausing at a hole in a window left by a stray bullet had that struck Adams the night before.

For a week, follow-up stories revealed more details on the tragedy: a sleepover disrupted by violence, grieving friends and family members, a funeral and fundraiser to pay for it, and a suspected killer.

The shooting was one of 210 murders in the first seven months of 2014, according to Homicide Watch Chicago. We may dwell a bit longer on the stories that stand out, particularly those of children caught in the crossfire. But reporters are forced by the sheer number of shootings to move onto the next one, overshadowing stories like Adams’ and larger questions of why it happened.

At a July 29 Café Society discussion called Beyond the Numbers: Media Coverage of Gun Violence, a group of community members gathered at Pop Up JUST Arts Space to explore the media’s coverage of gun violence and our responsibilities as media consumers. Café Society is a weekly program of the Illinois Humanities Council that fosters a more engaged citizenry and greater media literacy through conversations on social issues.

“My feeling is there’s a lack of contextualizing in experiences around gun violence,” said Psychologist Phoenix Matthews, who partly blamed a lack of parental solutions and efforts outside of policing for the violence. “These are children, mostly young teens living in communities that have been abandoned and isolated in our city.”

Shootings cost Chicago $2.5 billion a year, according to the University of Chicago Crime Lab . Despite a recent dip in fatalities, the continual violence makes it hard for local media organizations to cover the issue in a meaningful way.

The group didn’t see eye to eye on everything, but there was a consensus that the public has become desensitized by the repetition of reports on shootings, and that journalists could do more to humanize people affected by it. Here’s what three participants had to say about media coverage of gun violence:

Phoenix Matthews, Psychologist

Mark Walsh, Campaign Director, Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence

Stephanie Whitaker, Coordinator of Development Programs, UIC Department of Political Science

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Cafe Society is a weekly series designed to foster a more robust civil society, more cohesive and interactive communities, greater media literacy, and a more informed and engaged citizenry through weekly coffee shop conversations about contemporary social issues.

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