JONESBORO — Reporters who traveled to Jonesboro to cover the March 24 schoolyard shooting at Westside Middle School were intrusive, inaccurate and portrayed the area as steeped in Southern gun-toting culture, residents complained Monday.

Particularly insensitive, they said during a forum on media coverage of the slayings, were television reporters who stuck microphones and cameras in the faces of Westside elementary students attending either counseling sessions at the school or prayer vigils.

The meeting attracting about 150 in downtown Jonesboro was presented by the Freedom Forum, an Arlington, Va.-based foundation to help the media and public understand one another.

Reporters flocked to Jonesboro from around the world after the Westside shooting last month. Four students and a teacher were killed and 9 other students and a second teacher were wounded. Police arrested Mitchell Johnson, 13, and Andrew Golden, 11, and charged them as juveniles with five counts of capital murder.

Golden allegedly pulled a fire alarm to lure children outside, then ran to a wooded area behind the school before opening fire with Mitchell. Police said the two were armed with pistols and rifles.

"It was bizarre how our world was reflected through the lens of a camera," said Sarah Wilkerson-Freeman, an Arkansas State University assistant professor of history.

"They treated us as barefoot Arkansans," she said. "The media never discovered the little town of Jonesboro until this tragic event."

Benny Baker, pastor of the Bono Church of Christ, criticized a local radio station for incorrectly reporting the death of teacher Sara Lynette Thetford. He added that a Chicago radio talk show reported Thetford was not expected to make it through the night, although no medical personnel made such a statement and she survived.

"The media is part of the healing process from day one," Baker said. "News is only news today; in the midst of it all, there's people hurting."

One woman said network reports called Jonesboro residents "inbred" and "backhills people" and suggested that parents taught their children how to use guns to kill.

"What is it we're feeding?" asked Phillip McClure, a youth pastor at Jonesboro's Trinity Church. "People want this. If [news shows] reported that things have been good here for decades, they'd flip [the television] off."

Jonesboro High School teacher Micah Fielder said she became concerned that her students might not want to become journalists because of the media's intrusiveness.

"The kids were asking me how far is too far," Fielder said. "I had one student say, 'I opened my eyes after praying and there was a camera.' "

David Grossman, former ASU military science professor and author of On Killing about the psychology of killing, said coverage portrayed the two boys as heroes. "With their pictures on television and in Time magazine, they became celebrities," he said. His book was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1996.

Grossman said the media bears the primary blame for violence, noting a Canadian study that found murder rates doubled when television was introduced in small Canadian communities.

"The fingers were pointed at the culture of the South," he said. "But the media did not point the finger back at themselves."

Wayne Hoffman, a former Jonesboro radio station news director who moved to Idaho recently, said he was surprised at the networks' instant expertise about the city.

"The national news media swooped into town on helicopters and live trucks, and instantly they had the perfect understanding of this community," Hoffman said. "I didn't know this town in five years like they did in one hour."

The forum aimed to gather opinions of media coverage for a future Freedom Forum report, said the organization's manager, Gene Policinski.

The Freedom Forum also conducted a meeting in New York last month to dissect media coverage about the alleged sexual relationship between President Clinton and former White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

Of the Jonesboro coverage, Policinski said: "It was a very singular moment with a lot of press coverage. It's a good place for people to say, 'It happened in our town. Here's what we think of it.' "

The nonprofit Freedom Forum was founded in 1935 to focus on First Amendment rights.

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