‘We have a job to do’

When a gunman killed 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, on May 24, 2022, journalists rushed to the scene to cover the mass shooting. In the year that followed, local and state journalists continued to follow families in their grief.

Covering the mass shooting was deeply personal, local journalists told CPJ on a recent trip to Uvalde. They have played a pivotal role in helping families seek answers from police about their slow response to the shooting, and have faced obstruction and threats of arrest from local authorities.

“One of the chief frustrations that the Uvalde victims’ families have expressed to us is that their access to information is so limited,” says Texas Tribune reporter Zach Despart. “So they are learning things about the shooting from reporters because they’re not getting them from official sources.”