Do reports glorify killers? The debate we never have
In Douglas County, Oregon on Thursday, yet another deranged individual went on another killing spree creating another tragedy that left 10 dead and another 20 injured.
Why do these kinds of tragedies keep happening?
President Barack Obama said: “But as I said just a few months ago, and I said a few months before that, and I said each time we have one of these mass shootings, our thoughts and prayers are not enough. It’s not enough. It does not capture the heartache and grief and anger that we should feel.”
The president urged more gun control. That debate is happening now. This column is not about that debate.
It’s about a debate we never really have.
Douglas County Sheriff John Hanlin gave the first official statement on the tragedy, telling reporters: “Let me be very clear: I will not name the shooter. I will not give him credit for this horrific act of cowardice.”
Hanlin encouraged the media and everyone to “avoid using it, repeating it, or engaging in any glorification and sensationalization of him.”
The sheriff makes an important point.
There are reports that the killer in Douglas County, Oregon might have been inspired by the so-called “selfie shooter” in Roanoke, Va.,who murdered TV reporter Alison Parker and cameraman Adam Ward in August. We know that the Virginia shooter was set off by the June church killings in Charleston, S.C., by a white supremacist. We know the racist killer in Charleston was obsessed with the media hoopla surrounding the death of Trayvon Martin in 2012. The 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School killer in Newtown, Conn., was obsessed with Columbine.
In a blog discovered in the wake of last week’s murders, the 26-year-old shooter in Oregon allegedly wrote: “I have noticed that so many people like (the selfie-shooter) are alone and unknown, yet when they spill a little blood, the whole world knows who they are. A man who was known by no one, is now known by everyone. … Seems like the more people you kill, the more you’re in the limelight.”
Does the wall-to-wall, 24-hour news coverage of these tragedies help inspire future tragedies? The Oregon shooter’s blog post seems to say it does. The Douglas County sheriff says it definitely does.
Do they have a point? And what should we do about it?
Should major news outlets refuse to say or publish these killers’ names when covering these types of stories? You can never stop every blog or website from broadcasting their names, but among mainstream outlets where most Americans get their news — would it be possible to institute this rule as a new journalistic standard? For the greater good?
Or would journalists feel unnecessarily hindered? Some of them might claim there’s no point in having a First Amendment unless we exercise it, in the same way the Second Amendment advocates passionately defend their rights.
Where is the line between keeping the freedoms we’re become accustomed to and public safety? If the goal is to lessen these types of tragedies, isn’t a debate over how we might unintentionally glamorize crazed killers as important than the one the president insists we must have about gun control?
Obama says “our thoughts and prayers are not enough.” He’s right.
Debating gun control isn’t enough either.