I can’t do much about the mass media, but I try to remember murderers by their victims’ names, where possible. Kathy Gifford (not murdered, but shot) Rebecca Lunsford. Who attacked them? I have honestly forgotten. Some nameless wackjob who deserves nothing at all from me in terms of consideration.
Name one free society where your vision is realized. You can’t. The only societies where this happens is in totalitarian states. That’s not a accident. I’m sure you think that all you want to do is curtail one tiny little freedom and leave everything else the same. Doesn’t work that way.
You’re dipping your toes into Hitler-reference water.
This is a values debate, not a policy debate. Nobody’s suggesting any kind of government censorship. The question is if it’s ethical and moral for media outlets to publicize the names and images of mass murderers.
ABC was in a rush to put his name out there…when they thought he was in the Tea Party.
I agree, but still don’t like the idea of the murderer’s name on the lips of every news anchor and reporter in the country.
So… If news organizations voluntarily chose not to splash mass murderer’s names and photos all over the papers and television news 24/7… Then we will ipso facto all turn into communists?
Okay then.
We know some of the victims. It tends to come out slowly because the police want to make sure the families find out from them and not from the news.
Again, while this might sound emotionally satisfying, it doesn’t make any sense.
Ew.
I can tell nobody with a degree in psychology is making the argument.
Gabby Giffords. Kathy Gifford was Regis Philbin’s first co-host.
I do agree with this, though. The name of the shooter tends to fade from people’s minds over time. They get some instant fame and then people forget. Unless you knew the killer there’s not much reason to remember - which doesn’t mean there is any sensible reason to keep it a secret.
I’m not arguing that songs motivate spree killers. I am arguing that people have always found this behavior fascinating and memorable. The news media didn’t make these things stick in people’s minds.
Somewhat ironically I think I remember news coverage of one of these shooters, but this is the only one of the links that makes the argument - and it does so based on one psychiatrist who doesn’t mention any statistics.
I agreed with this: there was no compelling reason to show Cho’s video. But that’s about one particular aspect of the Virginia Tech coverage.
This one says “Clearly, Joseph Wesbecker was not a healthy, well-adjusted person driven to commit his crime simply because of the sensational news coverage. To argue this would take away Joseph Wesbecker’s personal responsibility for his actions.”
I checked them a couple of times yesterday, actually. I was going to use them yesterday to illustrate how uncommon these things are. I think the list cuts off at shootings where 8 or more people died, but there are less than one a year since the late '80s in a country of 300 million people.
I am sure you would like to believe your conclusion is that obvious and that it is really that obvious your idea would work, but unfortunately it isn’t. I’ve explained the reasons several times.
That’s only one component of my argument.
Except you haven’t established the logic, and this seems like a stupid thing to do because “it might work.”
Right, the killers will be anonymous except their names will be easily findable on Google. So they won’t get famous because practically nobody uses Google.
Maybe it’ll prevent dragon attacks, too. It costs virtually nothing and we won’t know until we try it, right?
I would agree that there could be a benefit to withholding the names and details of mass killers if the following sequence of events occurred in all mass killings:
- Normal, well-adjusted person sees around-the-clock news coverage of mass killings → 2) The news coverage makes this person obsessed with acquiring infamy → 3) Plans are made → 4) Rampage. Yet it’s not like this. Do you think it’s like this?
Isn’t it more like: 1) Lifetime of failure and/or mental illness → 2) Suicidal ideation → 3) Desire for revenge against the ‘perpetrators’ of the most recent devastating failure before the most recent suicide attempt → 4) Collects guns and weaponry without much effort → 5) Rampage → 6) News coverage?
People in the media and some psychologists love to exaggerate the media’s role in world affairs. They forget they are there to report and end up making the coverage more about themselves than accurate reporting of events. You see it all the time from the video game violence argument to hearing way too much about the ‘social media’ angle (or whatever gadget journalists have adopted) in the Arab Spring uprisings.
The problem with the analysis is that although the media’s presence and the events are proximal in time, they are only associated. The media’s involvement occurs only after-the-fact. The additional, historical influence of media coverage, is confused with a sick mind’s self-selection of information to bolster an already accepted plan for revenge.
In that light, the media’s ethical and moral role is to report and inform as accurately as possible; not to turn the events into navel-gazing exaggerations of their ability to influence suicidal, depressive, narcissitic assholes.
Of course I don’t think like that, which I’ve made plainly obvious. I’m not suggesting normal, emotionally stable people can be driven to mass murder. But if you know a dangerously unstable person might be triggered by seeing another equally unbalanced nut get famous for shooting up a school, why give him extra temptation if refraining will have no impact on your understanding of the events? That doesn’t change the fact that he’s still responsible for his actions, but we take steps to mitigate potential damage from irrational people all the time. Would you send your kids alone through an unlit park in a shady part of town at night? After all, they have every right to be there and it would be any would-be attacker’s fault if he hurt them. Or would you decide it’s just as easy to go around the park?
If dragons existed and left behind videos and notes demonstrating their obsession with murder-related fame, it would be stupid to pointlessly oblige them.
So you think there are potential mass murderers waiting around to be triggered by the media. Without the media mentally unstable people would be accepting of their failures, avoid purchasing weapons, and never seek revenge. They would never filter the world’s information to find the materials that support their fantasies and desires.
…And kids that like violence would never play violent video games.
…And people that like golf would never read golf magazines.
…And Christians that like God would never read the Bible.
…And scientists that like science would never read peer-reviewed journals.
…And bird-watchers that like finding more about where to see birds would never spend a lot of their time reading bird-watching message boards.
…And people that like to look snazzy at work would never go to Nordstrom’s website.
It’s hardly important how we acquire our information to suit our individual interests - it only matters that we have these predilections. Organizations that supply the information and entertainment we use to fulfill these interests only have an ethical duty to supply an honest product, at most.
Even accepting the argument you propose, the media cannot possibly be a causative factor as important as the individual decisions, failings, and mental issues of the perpetrator. Those are the events that might lead them to idolize a particular mass killer. You propose that the media has an ethical obligation to self-censor in order to address a symptom and not the disease.
And how much would we need to change about our lives because we have a 1 in 50 million chance of getting killed by a dragon?
*"Such well-planned attacks are rare and not meant to make a statement, Fox said. “They basically want revenge,” he said. “Contrary to the common misperception that these guys suddenly snap and go berserk, these are well-planned executions.”
[…]
The attack may encourage copycat actions but not necessarily, Fox said. “What bothers me in situations like this is to see lists of the worst mass shootings,” he said. “It encourages people to try to break records.”"*
Jeez, have you read anything but the OP?
I don’t know what any of that means or how it applies.
And I challenge the ethics of disseminating information that serves NO PURPOSE and can give motivation to a murderer. Should NBC broadcast a detailed description of how to build a bomb? What if they were honest when they did it?
I’ll repeat: the media is not to blame for the rampage. One more time: The media is not to blame for the rampage. But a contributing factor does not have to be as profound as the primary factor to merit consideration. Cancer has many causes. Do we dismiss all but the primary one? There are numerous examples where killers have specifically discussed their need for the fame their planned rampage would bring them, and others who went to specific lengths to draw media attention to themselves. Who cares if withholding the names and images of mass murderers treats, as you say, the symptom and not the disease? If the symptom involves murdering 30 people I say we do whatever we reasonably can to treat the hell out of it. There’s no cure for the common cold but that doesn’t stop us from taking a host of drugs that mitigate the symptoms.
Well, um … right. I guess that makes the circumstances surrounding her no longer co-hosting with Regis Philbin considerably less tragic!
No. But we also don’t ban everything that causes cancer. A lot of medications can kill - and it’s known for sure that they’re going to kill people. So why do they get approved? A lot of reasons, including the fact that they may be the best option and the fact that if something helps a million people and kills a thousand, it does provide a benefit.
You can’t say it treats the disease when you’ve acknowledged that you don’t know it would do anything at all.
Your odds of having been killed by James Holmes alone were greater than 1 in 50 million.
If just one mass shooting is prevented, it would be well worth the imaginary inconvenience of not being spoon-fed a murderer’s name for months on end.
My odds were essentially zero since he lived and died thousands of miles away from me. I admit I’m not an actuary and I can’t come up with a number that has a solid basis in data, but I think 1 in 50 million is OK as a guesstimate. Your odds of being hit by lightning are supposed to be 1 in 1 million and there are lightning storms across the country every single day. There are 300 million people in the U.S. and very few shooting rampages.
“I have no idea if it would work, but if it did, it would definitely be worth it!” I understand why you don’t think people need this information: in a sense it’s trivia. But you can’t demonstrate that it would stop crazy people from doing something crazy. All things being equal, I would rather judge what I want to know instead of having the press pre-emptively make that decision. I am not opposed to that in all instances (bomb making materials, national security, names of people who might be in danger), but this isn’t one of them - particularly not with all the silly exceptions you’ve proposed. Like I’ve said, it’s hard to justify denying information to everybody because you think it might stop one violent lunatic from doing something terrible. That’s just not a rational basis for decision making. This is not going to be huge news for months on end. The Olympics start next week. There’s a civil war in Syria. There’s a presidential election coming in November. There is always more news. If you find this so distressing that it’s a problem for you, turn off the TV and the computer for a while.
I’ve said nothing about banning everything that contributes to these tragedies. Not guns, not ammunition, not explosives, not body armor, not drugs with correlations to psychotic behavior. We’re talking about a single factor at virtually no cost and huge possible reward.
I’m still waiting for the benefit to having a single detail that can be discreetly found on the Internet instead be splashed all over television. So far your only harm is that it’s just too much bother to Google it, or that you shouldn’t be expected to or something equally petty.
And we can’t know a drug will work until we test it. We have to make knowledgeable and logical assumptions to determine if we think it will work based on history and available data. Then, once we’ve determined we can test without significant risk we proceed. The risk associated with losing constant sensationalized repetition of a killer’s name is so insignificant as to be non-existent. We’re talking about a no risk, high reward proposition.
It’s simple, people have things they are interested in. There is a massive amount of information and entertainment available via the cultural products captured by the term “media”. People sort through this massive amount of information to get what they think is interesting. War buffs probably read mostly about the military and warfare. Isolated, mentally ill, angry, failing young males read about murderers and slaughter. You’re not going to prevent them from their fascination with people who have performed the acts they fantasize about.
It’s ethical for the news to report information about an event. The more accurate and honest their reporting, the more they challenge incomplete and dishonest information, the more ethical their behavior. That’s their job, no more and no less.
Here are legitimate purposes of releasing the names and faces of the perpetrators:
- So potential witnesses may provide additional information that teaches us more about the crime.
- So that people that lived and worked with the perpetrator take a 2nd look at how the perpetrator left their home and workspace (say…if they left a bomb in their home or in the research facility this guy worked at).
- So that people see that the perpetrator didn’t have a special face or horns or dragon wings; that complete psychopaths can look pretty normal. It personalizes it for us.
- So that I am informed, because I have every right in the world to be completely informed about the events that occur in my community. I can turn off the TV if the coverage gets to be repetitive or too much.
A symptom is mass murdering, a further symtom is fascination with historical murderers, and probably another symptom is buying lots of guns. The disease is progressive development of a distorted worldview justifying mass murder to avenge their personal failures. Hiding the names of perpetrators is not going to prevent the development of the disease; they will idolize Ghenghis Khan or Vikings or Hitler if they have to.
If, and I say if, because those cites you provided expressly did not support your point about fame-seeking among mass murderers. You are speaking of associations (the presence of reading materials in the environs of mass murderers) as though they are a causative factor. You are accepting the story you created from your limited understanding of the facts as truth and then proposing a question of ethics and the media. Before I am willing to be convinced that the media has an ethical consideration to ponder, I need something a little better than points of data filtered through our love to make stories from incomplete information.