CNN Announces Team For “Guns In America” Beat – Deadline

Josh Campbell will lead CNN’s new “Guns in America” beat, one of the new initiatives announced earlier this year by CNN chairman and CEO Chris Licht.

Providing reporting and analysis to the beat will be figures from a range of points of view, including Stephen Gutowski, the founder of firearms reporting site Reload; Jennifer Mascia from The Trace, which covers the impact of gun violence; and Abené Clayton, reporter on the The Guardian’s Guns and Lies in America project.

CNN said that the team “will explore who buys and sells guns; who makes and regulates them; and dive into the communities most impacted to help illuminate possible solutions to America’s epidemic of gun violence.”

Campbell serves as CNN’s guns and security correspondent, having joined the network after serving as a supervisory special agent with the FBI. He won an Emmy in 2021 for his reports on the murder of George Floyd.

Gutowski has reported on guns and politics since 2009 and, before that, spent seven years as a staff writer for The Washington Free Beacon. He also has been published by The Atlantic, The Dispatch, National Review, Ammoland, and The Washington Examiner Magazine. He was named journalist of the year by the Second Amendment Foundation in 2016 and most recently received the 2020 Bill of Rights Award from the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.

Mascia serves as senior news writer and is a founding staffer at The Trace, a nonprofit that launched in 2015. She previously reported on gun violence for The New York Times, and wrote and produced The Gun report, a daily tally of gun violence victims that was started after the Sandy Hook shooting massacre.

Clayton is a reporter in The Guardian’s California office and is the lead on the Guns and Lies in America series, which focused on community violence.

The announcement of Gutowski’s hire did generate some pushback from Shannon Watts, the founder of Moms Demand Action, who noted his reporter of the year award from the gun lobby. (The Second Amendment Foundation has a lobbying affiliate, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.

Gutwoski wrote on The Reload that he’s contributed stories across the political spectrum.

“CNN has made clear to me that the goal is to produce nuanced segments to dig into the issues surrounding guns in a way that informs rather than inflames,” he wrote. “I’m going to be a subject matter expert, not a commentator. So, don’t expect to see me in many heated debates or going up against your favorite or least-favorite opinion personality.”

“Do expect me to do my best to fairly and accurately describe gun policy and politics debates,” he added.