Active shooter at Columbia, MD, mall

The Virginia Tech shooter sure seemed to want attention and notoriety after he was gone.


It's not exactly an apples to apples comparison, but years ago the Kansas media pretty much started ignoring Westboro Baptist protests. Now they go places where they will be in the news.

 

Yeah, but I think that has more to do with wanting to get out of Kansas.

 

Can't wait until the afternoon budget meeting.

"What do we have on this morning's mall shooting?"

"Oh, you know, we're not covering it at all. We're trying to not pay any attention to local gun crimes so the national gun-crime rate goes down."

Right.

 

It would be difficult for the local area media to ignore an incident.

It would be extremely easy for CNN or MSNBC or the New York Times to do so.

 

I'm sure these folks would all be on board with a "voluntary" reduction in the media's attention to guns and gun crimes.

 

The thing is, you can cover the issue - and cover it quite comprehensively and with force - without turning each incident into must-see TV for eight hours.

You can cover the issue without turning each shooter into a reality television star-for-a-day.

Also to think about: As Rick noted, media already voluntarily does not cover most suicides, many of which are executed with guns. Do you object to that reduction on the same grounds, i.e. that the gun industry is pleased to see gun danger shoved under the rug by a compliant press?

 

To me, there are two related questions:

1. Would a reduction in coverage, or an alteration in how these events are covered, help reduce the number of rampage shootings?

2. If the answer is "yes," is that a realistic action for the news media to be able to take, considering their obligation to cover the news and inform citizens?

 

Those are good questions.

It gets complicated, though.

For example, what happens if CNN, MSNBC or the NYT decides to break the voluntary agreement to not cover shootings?

Do the other two jump back in in a big way?

Also, what's the point of delineation for what you do and don't cover?

A shooter kills one person, you can ignore it. A shooter kills 25 people, you have to cover it. Where's the break point in between?

 

A couple years ago, a shooter in Oakland killed several people at a Korean church, I believe. If I recall the events accurately, the church was close to being a cult.

Anyway, the next day's New York Times dramatically underplayed the story. I think it was on the national page, deep inside the A section.

At the time, I thought that the paper might be voluntarily reducing the play it gives to these stories. But I suspect it might have been because it was a crime against societal outsiders, committed by a fellow outsider.

This is an unsatisfying answer, but it's probably the right one: My approach would be to have an overall aim of reducing coverage, particularly in-the-moment coverage, while still evaluating incidents on a case-by-case basis.

As far as what happens when another news organization breaks the embargo? That's a form of the "Prisoner's Dilemma," and it's a philosophical/economic nut that thinkers have been confronted with, in various contexts, for millennia now.

 

if Mr. koppel didn't flog the 1979 hostage situation in Iran to death 9-11 wouldn't have happened. Koppel is responsible for the worlds evils since 1979. His breathless and apocoliptic coverage of a a third rate revolution was so irresponsible and popular that he spawned 24/7 coverage which turned into 17 year olds having press conferences with hats

 

You don't think this applies to terrorism? You don't think coverage of suicide bombers begats more suicide bombers?

 

The fact that people are talking about reducing media coverage in an attempt to reduce the amount of mass shootings tells me that the asshole gun owners and NRA fuckheads have won, and won resoundingly.

God forbid we blame the shitstains with the guns and their enablers, rather than the media.