Issue date: 10/28/09 Section: News

Media Credit: Samantha Poulin Local news station KCRA 3 was one of the many media outlets to cover the student homicide at Sac State. [Click to enlarge]

The killing of Sacramento State student Scott Hawkins, and the shooting of Quran Jones by campus police on Oct. 21, was a temporary focus of more than just local media outlets.

The Sacramento Bee and The State Hornet were not the only ones to cover the incident.

National outlets such as the Associated Press and CNN also covered last week's fatal incident at Sac State.

Barbara O'Connor, communication studies professor at Sac State, said coverage of the event by local media was good, but was occasionally over-sensationalized.

"The coverage of the press conferences was pretty fair and I think the Bee did an excellent job," O'Connor said. "The morning news was a carry-over, but the noon news was more sensationalistic ... questioning whether or not five minutes was a quick enough response time or saying that the university was withholding information."

Sac State public relations professor Tim Howard said homicides and massacres should not reflect badly on any school's reputation, especially Sac State's incident.

"We must remember that this was one student's actions and I hope nobody comes to the wrong conclusion how great and fine this institution is by one student's actions," Howard said.

Some media outlets targeted and questioned the Emergency Notification System timeliness.

According to Sac State's Public Affairs Incident timeline, a disturbance was reported at 2:10 p.m the day of the incident. A notification, however, was not sent out until 4:24 p.m.

Mark Ludwig, professor of communication studies, said the media had no choice but to focus on the ENS.

Twitter, Facebook and text messaging also played a major role in spreading the word among Sac State students.

O'Connor said she began posting questions regarding the incident on her Facebook page before there was any notification from the university. Within seconds, other reporters began posting information, she said.

O'Connor was not the only person using social networking sites to communicate with others regarding the incident; Howard also distributed information through his Facebook and Twitter pages.

Howard said he posted various links on his pages because he wanted the followers on his networking sites to come to their own conclusions regarding the incident.

Nallelie Vega can be reached at nvega@statehornet.com.

Page 1 of 1

Article Tools