Father of Parkland victim says it’s ‘nightmarish’ to hear the shooting was the top story of 2018

Fred Guttenberg, whose daughter Jaime was killed in the mass school shooting in Parkland, Fla. earlier this year, said in a recent interview that it was “nightmarish” for The Associated Press to name the massacre the top story of 2018.

“The idea that the top story of the year has to do with the fact that my daughter and 16 others died is nightmarish,” Guttenberg told Hill.TV’s Julia Manchester last week. 

“Normally you would think of a top story as something of excitement, and this is not,” he continued. 

The Associated Press’s annual poll of editors and news directors last week found that the shooting, which left 17 people dead at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in February, was the news service’s top story of the year. 

The shooting sparked a number of protests nationwide calling for stricter gun control in the U.S., including the March for Lives demonstration that drew thousands of people to Washington, D.C. earlier this year. 

Guttenberg has since devoted his life to advocating for stricter gun control laws. 

“Since the day that this happened, I did the only thing that I felt natural or normal doing, and that was to jump into this fight,” Guttenberg said. 

“Every time that we have had these instances of gun violence, there has been a lot of back and forth, and then it goes away,” he said. “I just decided that for me, and in this transition, I could not let that happen this time.” 

— Julia Manchester