The Trauma Beat - #11 - Brett Holzhauer

Brett Holzhauer was in the library of Santa Monica College, a journalism student studying for his last exam, when he heard the first bang. For the self-proclaimed gun advocate, that bang and the many bangs that followed were unmistakable: gunfire.

His first encounter with the media came just moments after he had a gun pointed in his face, just moments after he crawled and ran to safety, and just moments after seeing the shooter dead outside the building.

He wasn’t ready to do an interview yet, but being a journalism student, he felt it was his duty.

“I gave one interview. One turned to two, to five, to seven, to 10, and I forget the exact count, but I think in a two-hour span, I probably did 35 interviews,” he recalls in conversation with host Tamara Cherry, exactly nine years after that day. “I think that there is this mass land grab of, ‘Who was there, who can we talk to, who can we get a hot quote from’ and then everyone just kind of throws up their hands like, ‘Okay, thanks for the help. See you later.’ And there’s never a follow-up.”

Speaking two weeks after the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, Brett discusses the impact that media coverage of other incidents of mass violence has had on him. He also questions whether it is the responsibility of a journalist to follow up with trauma survivors after highly emotional interviews, and the consequences of not doing so.

Brett and Tamara consider what support should look like for survivors in the immediate aftermath of traumatic and high-profile events. “There’s got to be a more ethically sound way to do these things that is centered around the community or  the city that is more organized, rather than just this manic free-for-all,” Brett says. He refers to the media coverage of the Uvalde shooting and how one network anchor comforted a grieving father on live television.

Referring to the Parkland high school and Sandy Hook elementary school shootings, Brett also speaks about the harm he has felt from media coverage that seems to focus so quickly on the debate over the Second Amendment.

As per trauma-informed practice, each guest in The Trauma Beat podcast is afforded the opportunity to review and veto a list of anticipated questions before the recorded conversation. Ongoing, informed consent is sought throughout the production process.

This conversation was recorded in June 2022.

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