Media to blame for school shootings?

This is the opposite of the accepted philosophy in every other crime story. (Note: I get that murders in general are different. Victims are named.)

First of all, it's not feasible. Second of all, it would be irresponsible. Part of preventing future Adam Lanzas is trying to understand the current Adam Lanza, no?

 

The #1 question in everybody's mind Friday morning was "Who did this?"

The answer is never going to be "some guy we know about but aren't going to tell you."

 

I love that this is a conservative push: Don't name the shooter!

Meanwhile, there are 10,000,000 wing nut Web sites on the Internet where whack-a-doos get together and talk about how the mainstream media hides information from them, in order to protect this or that government conspiracy.

Yeah, it would go over really, really well in the conserva-sphere if the mainstream media didn't name Adam Lanza and James Holmes. Really well.

 

Also it wouldn't allow them to paint the picture of the mentally ill youngster whose condition troubles them so. If there's no shooter, there's no way to shift attention from the weapon.

 

Releasing the name can lead to people coming forward who knew him and may know something that could help understand why he did it. If all he's known as is "the shooter" with no photo or name released, then pertinent information that could help prevent future shootings could remain unknown, or at least could remain unknown for longer and make investigators jobs harder.

Has there ever actually been a case of one of these shooters saying they did it to get their face on TV?

 

Only one that comes to mind is John Hinckley.

 

Wait, I was just getting over my guilt for railroading Joe Paterno, and now Newtown is my fault?

 

Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck, and Rush Limbaugh all do the shit they do to get their faces on TV and make millions. Ironic.

 

I don't mean to bring politics into this, but I know I have a lot of liberal journalists on my facebook feed who are appalled at how people can ignore evidence on things like climate change or evolution that now want to bury their heads in the sand.

No, the media does not "cause" these shootings. But the consensus of psychiatric and sociological scientists who have studied the issue says that yes, it is absolutely contributing factor. The tone and types of the coverage plants the idea in the mind of mentally unbalanced people.

If the best justification you can give is "We give people what they want, it's not our fault there is demand," then you all that lofty rhetoric I heard about ethics in j-school was bullshit. We can (and, for example with rape victims, do) alter our coverage when we are aware of the social consequences of that coverage.

We deal with so much bullshit criticism (liberul media! you hate Podunk high!) that we seem to almost reflexively dismiss all criticism without being willing to check and see if maybe they are right.

I'm not necessarily on board with the "don't name the shooter" campaign. But I do think you can make a concerted effort to push the killer to the periphery of the story. It's not just content, it's tone.

And I blame news consumers every bit as much as I "blame" the media (to the degree that acknowledging influence is blaming). If you don't live in or near Newtown, this is not news for you. It's horror porn.

And for once, I finally practiced what I preach on the subject. As soon as I saw the link saying a school shooting in Conn., I caught my hand in mid-click and said "No. This is not news for me. It's sad and it's terrible, but I'm not going to feed the frenzy." I did everything I could to avoid the news for a few days, though that's obviously easier said than done and news filtered in here and there.

I haven't seen much of the reporting that was done on this specific shooting, so I don't know how well or poorly it's been reported on. But if we're arguing that reporting on the story can help us better understand it and thus prevent it, is that the kind of reporting that actually does help people understand takes an amount of time, thoughtfulness and manpower that I doubt anyone has had time to commit yet. Again, I haven't seen the coverage this time around and maybe it's better, but in the past, the early coverage has done a lot more to promote urban legends and false information than anything.

 

Citations or you just throwing out there that it's a fact? I haven't seen these studies. Doesn't mean they aren't there, just I haven't seen any centered on the news media. Usually just see doctors making statements and not citing any studies.

I'm all for the media looking at this if it's a problem. But I've yet to see anything that actually examines motivations in shootings and the effect of news media. There always are much deeper issues at play in these cases.

 

What do you want me to cite? The existence of a consensus or the studies it's based on?

 

You said this after Aurora, too, and I have to respectfully disagree - keeping in mind that I voted you the smartest person on this Web site.

I don't think it's just "horror porn." You have children. I have children. Your neighbor has guns (presumably). My neighbor has guns (presumably). My wife is a teacher. Geography is but one possible visceral connection people may have to a news story.

Also: One problem with the WSJ columnist's assertion is that it isn't really accurate. Have news outlets named Adam Lanza? Yes. Have they investigated him? Yes. Have they put him front-and-center? Not necessarily. Sunday's New York Times ran as main art the names of all the victims, white words on a black box. Much of the coverage, in fact, that I've seen has focused on the victims and the town.