Posts Tagged ‘Gabrielle Giffords’

The fifteen mid-career journalists selected for a one-week Ochberg fellowship at Columbia University’s School of Journalism, designed to hone their reporting of traumatic events, is an impressive one. It includes Angelina Fusco (BBC Northern Ireland), Maria Rosa Meneses (Spain’s El Mundo) and
Jeremy Young (Al Jazeera English, Washington D.C.)

There’s also Ashley Powers (pictured), recently transferred from the national/Las Vegas beat to Orange County LA for the LA Times. Here’s what she will have to look forward in October, courtesy of Columbia’s Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma:

Fellows attend seminars with leading experts in trauma science and journalism practice, and participate in the annual conference of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies. The fellowship program is named in honor of Frank Ochberg, M.D., clinical professor of psychiatry at Michigan State University and a pioneering figure in the definition and treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder, Stockholm Syndrome and other responses to violence, trauma and terror.

Read more

San Diego CityBeat staffer Dave Maass covered Gabrielle Giffords on one of his first assignments as a cub reporter for the Tuscon Weekly. He has a nice column reflecting on his history with her, as well as the shooting that nearly took her life last week.

A taste:

In my career as a journalist, I have only once broken my rule to never, ever let a politician pick up my lunch tab. The exception was Gabrielle Giffords.

Read more

On his Rolling Stone blog, infamous rhetorical bomb-thrower Matt Taibbi seems to be feeling a tad guilty over his journalistic methods, in the wake of the Gabrielle Giffords assassination attempt in Tuscon.

As a member of the political media, and a vitriol-spewing one at that, the Tucson shooting immediately made me ask myself the question: do I personally do anything to add to this obvious problem of a hypercharged, rhetorically overheated political atmosphere? And the unfortunate answer I came up with was, maybe. I’ve always told myself that what I do is different from what someone like Rush does, because I don’t target classes of people and try not to exempt anyone (even myself) from criticism, or favor either party.

I’ve also counted on the belief that anyone who’s willing to devote the mental energy to even follow whatever wild rhetoric I’m using is probably also smart enough to tell the difference between reality and hyperbole. I also hope that anyone reading my articles will get the underlying message that I’m pretty sure — I hope I’m sure, anyway — I’m conveying at all times, i.e. that violence is irresponsible, that we should use our brains instead of baseball bats to solve problems, etc.

Read more

Hollywood actresses Gwyneth Paltrow and Sophia Bush are both related to victims of the tragic shooting spree in Arizona on Saturday.

Christina Taylor Green, the 9-year-old girl killed in the rampage, is the 2nd cousin of Sophia Bush. Bush issued a public expression of her grief via Twitter on Sunday:

Gabrielle Giffords, the congresswoman shot in the head during the incident, is a relative of Gwyneth Paltrow. Giffords’ father and Paltrow’s father are first cousins. Paltrow released a statement following the tragedy:

Although I have never had the pleasure of meeting congresswoman Giffords, my thoughts and prayers are with her and her family as well as the other victims of this horrible act of senseless violence.

U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords spoke with MSNBC last March after her office was vandalized shortly after her vote for health care reform. Gifford’s office was one of several Democratic offices that were targeted with harassment, death threats, and vandalism in the period following the vote to pass health care reform.

I think it’s important for all leaders … to say look, we can’t stand for this … They really need to realize that the rhetoric, and firing people up … for example, we’re on Sarah Palin’s ‘Targeted’ list, but the thing is that the way she has it depicted, we’re in the crosshairs of a gun sight over our district. When people do that, they’ve got to realize that there are consequences to that action.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy