AAPI journalists reflect on mistakes made in coverage of Atlanta spa shootings

Massage Business Shootings-Lawmakers
Members of Congress and Georgia state representatives pose for a photo outside Gold Spa in Atlanta, one of the businesses hit during the March 16 shootings, Sunday, March 28, 2021. (AP Photo/Sudhin Thanawala)

Within 24 hours of the spa shootings in Atlanta and Cherokee County in March of 2021, the Asian American Journalists Association pushed to try and make sure newsrooms across the country respected the victims and got the story right. 

That included guidance as simple and significant as making sure the full names of the victims were said and pronounced correctly, giving proper context to historic stereotyping and hypersexualization of Asian women.

In the days following the shootings, officials began releasing the names of victims. Janice Yu, a reporter for Fox 5 Atlanta, was one of the first people to notice the Fulton County Medical Examiner’s office had mistakenly released partial names of the Korean women. The names were technically incorrect and some of the victims’ first names were missing.