Reporting blind on Trump shooting

Reporting blind on Trump shooting - 19th August 2024

Shots were fired at a Donald Trump rally in Pennsylvania which BBC reporter Gary O’Donoghue was covering. Hearing the sound, O’Donoghue instinctively fell to the ground. The blind reporter realised that someone was attempting to assassinate the former president.

O’Donoghue resumed his work once the area was secure, interviewing witnesses, including Greg Smith. With a beer in one hand and a pro-Trump visor with a fiery red wig on his head, other reporters had ignored Smith. But Smith had crucial information about the shooter, including how he’d got onto a nearby roof and how spectators had attempted to warn police.

O’Donoghue’s blindness meant that he hadn’t judged Smith by his looks. Speaking to the Guardian newspaper in the UK, O’Donoghue wondered “whether I would have given him the time of day … because he did look a bit odd.”

Having gone blind at the age of 8, O’Donoghue excelled at school and graduated from Oxford University. Aged 21, he was told his disability would prevent him from becoming a journalist, which only motivated him further. He joined BBC Radio as a junior reporter on Africa, Asia, Europe and US news. In 2015, he was promoted to be the BBC’s Chief Political Correspondent for the US, where he’s covered the past 2 US elections.

As a blind journalist, O’Donoghue leverages a multitude of technologies and methods including braille, screen readers and audio recorders. His inventiveness has helped these technologies become standard accessibility tools.

O’Donoghue navigates offices and streets with a long white stick, though his colleagues sometimes provide assistance. From a young age, O’Donoghue wanted to break stereotypes about blindness.

Through his advocacy for diversity and inclusion in journalism, he’s a role model for many aspiring reporters. Bringing his unique perspective to reporting, he stated after the Trump shooting that “Vision could get in the way.”

Photo credit: Tim Kennedy, CC BY 2.0 and SWinxy CC BY 4.0 via Wikicommons