Guns in America

An epidemic continues to burn at the core of the United States every single day: gun violence. In 2022, as a shooting at a Texas school and a grocery store in upstate New York joined the ever-growing list of mass shootings, and with meaningful solutions nowhere in sight, PBS NewsHour dedicated an unprecedented amount of resources, airtime, and focus to the issue. Ranging from on-the-ground updates in Uvalde and survivor interviews in Buffalo, to long-range impact stories around the 10th anniversary of the movie theater shooting in Aurora, Colorado, to a deep dive into the psychology behind gun marketing, NewsHour continually found groundbreaking angles to every gun story. Its journalists and producers met the call to truly examine not merely the talking points but the personal, political and cultural toll such an epidemic is having on the country, finding increasingly novel approaches to coverage that refuse to inure audiences to the impact of gun violence. With a strong, clear tone, and an apolitical approach, this series of stories should be seen by every American, regardless of where they stand on guns or the Second Amendment; it is pointed and direct, saying what must be said. For their fearless confrontation of one of America’s most pressing and divisive issues and for inspiring hope for meaningful change, PBS NewsHour wins a Peabody.