Covering a Mass Shooting the right way

[Thanato]

Sun News Network is treating a mass shooting like no other major North American outlet.

After a shooter murdered three Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers and left two others in critical condition in New Brunswick, the Canadian network refused to show his name or picture. The network ran an editorial Friday to give the reasoning behind the decision.

"It's easy to report on the life of the killer, to scour his deranged Facebook page, to speculate about motive, but doing so could actually encourage the perception that his heinous acts are somehow justified," the editorial reads. "We will not help give this killer his blaze of glory."

Interestingly enough, Sun News is known as a conservative network, called "Fox News North" by its detractors (though the network has pushed back against that comparison).

http://m.policymic.com/articles/90677/a-canadian-network-is-covering-a-mass-shooting-in-a-way-american-outlets-won-t?utm_source=policymicFB&utm_medium=main&utm_campaign=social

Edited June 8, 2014 by Thanato

[Likely Guy]

A friend recently returned from Norway. He found it interesting that in the media Anders Brevik is simpley referred to as "the terrorist".

[+DieChecker]

So many people today actually are seeking Fame in any way they can, and when they see gunmen on TV and realize that these people are household names, they could decide that being dead and famous (infamous) at the same time sounds pretty good.

I agree, we shouldn't air domestic terrorist attacks, or massacres. It might encourage like minded people to copy cat.

[Rafterman]

That should be standard for all media outlets.

[HappyMonkey]

Yeah, there's something similar to the Werther effect that we see in suicides, where a suicide is given popularity and it spawns a string of copy cat suicides. The same thing happens for essentially the same reasons with shootings.

Give the person fame and make it seem like a big thing and it'll kick people who are on the precipice over the edge.

Responsible news reporting would do more here than adding more regulations on guns (though they have their place as well), but with a 24 hour news cycle they need to get every drop they can out of these stories. And that just encourages more shootings.

[Beany]

Sounds like scape goating the media to me. We need to take a hard look at why our society has spawned so much slaughter, not shoot the messenger.

[Yamato]

Studying the motives people have to commit crimes has nothing to do with justifying their crime. I think this is scapegoating people as much as it is the media. As if, we must keep it a secret, because people are too ____ to responsibly handle the information. Ignorance is bliss.

The day that media outlets stopped reporting the identities of the sensational criminals that make their headlines buzz, the conspiracy theorists would become millionaires in place of the media moguls.

[Babe Ruth]

Sounds like scape goating the media to me. We need to take a hard look at why our society has spawned so much slaughter, not shoot the messenger.

Having just finished Steven Pinker's fine book "The Better Angels of our Nature", statistics show that there has been a steady decline in violence in the human species over centuries.

That decline has been working since before television was invented.

I wonder how much television contributes to the public perception? For better or for worse?

[Beany]

Having just finished Steven Pinker's fine book "The Better Angels of our Nature", statistics show that there has been a steady decline in violence in the human species over centuries.

That decline has been working since before television was invented.

I wonder how much television contributes to the public perception? For better or for worse?

There is often a discrepancy between perception and fact, I've found. What we see on the news may be a contributing factor to forming those perceptions, but it isn't the cause of violence.

[questionmark]

Regardless whether the news mention names or not: Those interested in imitating brain amputated will know their names.

The news is not the problem, peoples reaction to the news is.

[Babe Ruth]

Regardless whether the news mention names or not: Those interested in imitating brain amputated will know their names.

The news is not the problem, peoples reaction to the news is.

Not the news itself, but the way the news is presented, the way it is spun. Because the way people react to the news depends in large part on how the news is presented to them.

[HappyMonkey]

Regardless whether the news mention names or not: Those interested in imitating brain amputated will know their names.

The news is not the problem, peoples reaction to the news is.

Look up the Werther effect, it's a real phenomenon.

There are numerous small things that surprisingly decrease the risk of suicide in a population by a good deal, that's unrelated.

The rail height on bridge doesn't just stop people from jumping off the bridge, but results in a overall drop in suicides.

Things like the color of the bridge itself has a role, red bridges see more suicides than blue, and painting a bridge from red to blue led to a sharp decrease in suicide rates.

Suicide it turns out is more of a impulsive act, and psychology has found ways to curtail those impulses by small changes to our architecture and color schemes.

It wouldn't surprise me if there's a similar link to mass shootings, already a correlation has been found between reporting on it while focusing on the shoter versus the victims and fall out leads to more copy cat shootings.

I'm not saying it will stop them all, in a society like ours that's impossible.

But you can take rational, scientifically informed steps to reduce them.

Dealing poverty and drug abuse, dropping this War on Drugs crap would also have their effect.

[+DieChecker]

Look up the Werther effect, it's a real phenomenon.

There are numerous small things that surprisingly decrease the risk of suicide in a population by a good deal, that's unrelated.

The rail height on bridge doesn't just stop people from jumping off the bridge, but results in a overall drop in suicides.

Things like the color of the bridge itself has a role, red bridges see more suicides than blue, and painting a bridge from red to blue led to a sharp decrease in suicide rates.

Suicide it turns out is more of a impulsive act, and psychology has found ways to curtail those impulses by small changes to our architecture and color schemes.

It wouldn't surprise me if there's a similar link to mass shootings, already a correlation has been found between reporting on it while focusing on the shoter versus the victims and fall out leads to more copy cat shootings.

I'm not saying it will stop them all, in a society like ours that's impossible.

But you can take rational, scientifically informed steps to reduce them.

Dealing poverty and drug abuse, dropping this War on Drugs crap would also have their effect.

Interesting post Monkey

[Sweetpumper]

Our media loves these slaughters and the excitement it brings them. The more gruesome, the better. Any info that they can dig up along the way to increase their own face and print time is money to them.