Do you think some people will see this news story as glorifying shooters? Actually I get your comment although it wasn't my first reaction to the event. We remember the names of killers more than the names of their victims. This could be encouraging to people with guns and no other ideas for an identity-defining experience. Every year that we commemmorate the shooting of 14 women in Montreal, we say their names and keep the shooter nameless. Is there another way to report on mass murder that doesn't seem like glorifying to you? I'm interested in your thoughts.
Local news should acknowledge that it happened, and then move on. National news should make it a footnote. 50 people die in a suicide bombing in Iraq or Afghanistan, and it gets mentioned and then on to the next thing. It's not about the victims; they'll be remembered by the people who matter to them (and to whom they mattered) whether it's on the news or not. But we've seen time and again that when you give someone a mass shooter a scorecard, it invites someone else to say "I'm going to get me some of that." Some of the commenters here would rather feel like their dicks are big and ignore reality. But the thing is, the real world doesn't give two shits about what we want. So for those of us who don't think "cowardice" is a good tool of public policy, we have to figure out what to do. Consistently, I've seen someone willing to step up and refuse to give notoriety to a mass shooter. The sheriff after the community college shooting in WA did this, but the media ignored him and released the shooter's name anyway. So the media has to grow up and take some responsibility (either their reporting matters or it doesn't), and we have to stop giving them pageviews. Journalism is ultimately market-driven, and it's up to us to vote with our wallets. It's simple, which is not to say it's easy.
Maybe we just shouldn't be reporting on this in the national media. These are always given multiple days of wall-to-wall coverage on cable news. This is known to encourage copycats and attract others to outdo the carnage in previous incidents.Is there another way to report on mass murder that doesn't seem like glorifying to you?
Suicide clusters among high school kids were drastically reduced when the act was entirely eliminated from local news. I have no idea how you could replicate that since internet fame is a thing and the two are very different things, 20 kids mowed down vs withholding cause of death. It would also require voluntarily standards set by competing networks. Which is impossible Theory is not unsound though in magic land
No fuck that. Every yeehaw gun mutherfucker on here wants to stop talking about it because they don't like to be reminded that their perfectly safe hobby kills children. We gave a full fuckin week to Baby Jessica trapped in the goddamn well before most of y'all were born. We gave months to Natalee Fucking Holloway. We gave several days to that guy who stole a tank and drove it on the freeway. No copycats anywhere. Kids are dead. It's news. If news makes you uncomfortable, take it up with your conscience.
So I mean, then what's the appropriate radius from an event within which the local news should be allowed to report on it? 25 miles, 50 miles, what? We could limit such news to the boundaries of the school district which is impacted? Imagine being related to a child who goes to a school at which there was a school shooting and having absolutely no idea about it. Imagine hearing about school shootings by quality-degraded word-of-mouth instead of on live broadcasts straight from the source or through reading vetted, accurate, news/journalism articles which meet a certain accepted (and removed) standard. Refusing to run news about such events has easy parallels to outlawing abortion: you're not going to make it stop happening, you're just going to make people have to go about it in messier, more complicated, less convenient, less accurate ways. A child whose reaction to hearing about another child's suicide is to attempt suicide is a child who needs help, not a child who would be perfectly fine if they hadn't heard about the other one. I assure you the feelings they have which make them think suicide might be a good choice do not suddenly pop up in their skull in response to hearing about someone else who committed it.