Officials deny mass killers ‘sick, twisted fame’
If Virginia Beach authorities have their way, the gunman who killed 12 people and injured four others in Friday’s shooting rampage won’t join the ranks of infamous mass murderers in U.S. history.
To that end, they vowed his name won’t cross their lips publicly anymore.
By declining to use DeWayne Craddock’s name beyond his initial identification as the shooter, Police Chief Jim Cervera and other officials in the resort town joined a growing movement toward depriving mass killers the notoriety many of them are believed to crave.
“Our focus now is the dignity and respect to the victims in this case and to their families.”
Jim Cervera
Virginia Beach police chief
Several studies have shown media coverage of this kind of horrific crime tends to incite others. In 2015, Arizona State University researchers determined that each mass shooting increased the chances of another one occurring within the next 13 days.
“What you often see is they’re basically saying, ‘This person was a nobody who became famous or got a lot of attention, and I want to get that same reward, even if I go about it in a somewhat different way,’ ” said Adam Lankford, an associate professor of criminology at the University of Alabama who has studied mass shootings.
Efforts to prevent that so-called contagion effect, also known as the copycat effect, have prompted calls for the media to de-emphasize coverage of the perpetrators, perhaps telling little about their backstories and withholding their photos. Some of the requests came from survivors of last year’s massacre in Parkland, Florida.
Cervera said in a news conference hours after the assault that the shooter “will be forever referred to as the suspect because our focus now is the dignity and respect to the victims in this case and to their families.”
After a hate-fueled assault on two New Zealand mosques in March resulted in 51 deaths, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern expressly avoided mentioning the name of the attacker, an avowed white supremacist so thirsty for recognition that he livestreamed the massacre.
In May, Denver-area authorities asked reporters to focus attention on the victims of a school shooting that left one dead and eight injured, rather than the assailants.
In some instances, as in last June’s killing spree at the Capital Gazette newsroom in Annapolis, Maryland, and after an assault in November 2017 on a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, law enforcement authorities initially refused to release the suspect’s name to the media, going back on long-standing tradition.
The advocacy group No Notoriety, founded by the parents of one of the victims of bloodshed in 2012 in a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, espouses a similar approach: Downplay the name and image of the attackers, and highlight the innocent people harmed by their acts of violence.
Lankford, who called evidence of the contagion effect “indisputable,” said these attempts at minimizing its impact are effective only to a point.
Yes, decreasing the amount of attention given to perpetrators may help reduce the number of copycat incidents, merely because they wouldn’t be advertised as much. But the attackers would still be more famous – or infamous – than before. Preventing that, Lankford said, would require more than public officials declining to refer to the suspects by name.
“That may be good,” Lankford said, “but it won’t make a difference if the media saturate the coverage with that content. It only makes a difference if the media are consistent in the approach the public officials are asking for.”
That’s a difficult proposition for news outlets, which see themselves as duty-bound to keep the public informed.
Nicole Dahmen, associate professor at the University of Oregon’s School of Journalism and Communication, said a question emerging in newsrooms across the country is how to perform that duty while minimizing harm.
Does the public interest in the identity of the assailant outweigh the impact such publicity might have on future incidents? How important is it for people to find out what the shooter looks like?
Dahmen said her research and that of her colleagues suggest changes are necessary in reporting about the aggressors in mass murders. She mentioned CNN’s Anderson Cooper and, most recently, The San Diego Union Tribune’s editorial board – but not its news department, which is separate – as early adopters of the no-name policy.
“It’s about ethical, responsible coverage,” Dahmen said. “We don’t name minor victims. We don’t name rape victims. We have changed the way we report on suicide. This is a time to revisit how we report on ‘who.’ For example, use the name once. Don’t use the name in editorial coverage. Don’t use the name in headlines. Don’t repeat the name over and over. Don’t use previous perpetrators’ names in stories about new mass shootings. The point is not to give the perpetrator the sick, twisted fame, infamy.”
Part of that calls for putting more emphasis on the victims, survivors and the effect such attacks have on a community, as public officials have requested. Dahmen highlighted the need for stories that address solutions to gun violence.
Those can veer into the politically polarizing topic of gun control, but she pointed to coverage of numerous other issues related to the topic, such as school safety programs, “red flag” laws and the impact of active-shooter drills.
Like Lankford, Dahmen advocates withholding photos of mass murderers, although he goes a step further in arguing there’s not much value in making the name public, as long as the attacker has been apprehended or is dead. She favors a one-time mention of the name and not publishing any manifestos.
These suggested approaches to mass media coverage wouldn’t necessarily be followed by users of social media, but they would be a major step in limiting the amount of exposure killers may covet.
“The mass shooting problem is not journalists’ fault,” Dahmen said, “but journalists do need to think about what is our role and responsibility in covering this.”