Proposal for the media : do your part to prevent mass murders

[Laurie4b]

You know how the media has a self-imposed limit on not publishing the names of sexual assault victims?

 

I wish that they would refuse to publish photos & grievances of mass murderers. I don't think it's a coincidence that a day after Ft. Hood, there is another mass murder. I think that 15 min of fame (or an eternity of fame in the case of the Columbine killers) helps drive the decision to take a bunch of people with you in your suicide. Additionally, I believe that the publication of the "fact" that the Columbine killers were supposedly bullied apparently justified the act in would-be killers' minds. Rather than dwelling on the heinousness of the choice to take out beautiful human lives, there was too much written about the impact of bullying. (Don't get me wrong--I don't like bullying. I got my share of it and did some of it as a kid. But being bullied is not an excuse to do wrong yourself, let alone to commit murder of innocent people to fulfill your own fantasy.)

 

I wish that instead, the media would publish photos and lots of details about the victims, so that empathy with the victims and therefore alignment with justice, was promoted as a public response rather than fascination with the killer's photo, etc. (There are some parts that need to be known: the kind of warning signs, etc. But these could be reported in clinical, impersonal language.)

 

It is clearly psyhologically contagious. There was an incident at a high school in our state where an unbalanced kid tried to emulate Columbine. Thanks to global media, countries in Europe have suffered copycat columbines as well.

 

I wish there was an organized way to appeal to the media: please don't make killers famous! Please glorify the victims and their lives and say as little about the killer as possible--none of it empathetic. Do not give in to people' curiosity about details. It kills. :rant:

[NorthwestMom]

I totally agree

[elizabeth]

Living right across the river from Omaha I lived in fear of another shooting like the one at Von Maur store a couple of years ago since the media did not stop reporting every tidbit . In grotesque , horrid soulless detail. Very little about the survivors some of whom have absolutely done so much for others but that is not titillating.... I think you are on to something here as suicides certainly can cluster and spread as well. This is tragic in every way. I do think that we have elavated explicit violence to a level of depravity unmatched with the advent of the 24 hour news cycle.

[4kiddies]

I am in total agreement.

[angela in ohio]

The media is a money-making business. They produce what sells. :sad:

[Laurie4b]

The media is a money-making business. They produce what sells. :sad:

 

Totally. However, with rape victims, I'm sure it would sell to have the name and run down of the victim's sex life, etc, but they've actually done the right thing in that case. I think lives lost are as important as damaging a woman who has already been victimized. The media has risen up once to put the right thing before $$--why not twice? :)

[patchfire]

I agree.

 

Re: Columbine and bullying, I recently read Columbine, which not only debunks a lot of myths that sprung up (including the idea that they were bullied), but delves into some of the forensic psychology. Interestingly, there is far more evidence that the shooters at Columbine were bullies themselves, not the bullied.

[ekarl2]

I agree about focusing on the victims. That's why I was so glad to see that this story has been the header/banner story on Fox News for most of the day:

 

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,572726,00.html

[katilac]

I agree.

 

Re: Columbine and bullying, I recently read Columbine, which not only debunks a lot of myths that sprung up (including the idea that they were bullied), but delves into some of the forensic psychology. Interestingly, there is far more evidence that the shooters at Columbine were bullies themselves, not the bullied.

 

Yes, this is a good book that seemed well researched. I never understood the strong myth of the Columbine killers as loners/outcasts - - there were so many pictures of them posing with friends! The true outcasts don't have a stack of photos and classmates willing to pose with them, go to prom with them, etc.

 

It's a very good overview.

[Mommyof4ks]

Wow, I have no idea what national news is saying about this. We live near Ft. Hood, so in local news we heard about what was going on inside the base, the fact that the kids there who were in school and daycare were safe and fed awaiting the base to open so parents could get to them, the out pouring of the community to give blood and open churches for those waiting to get back on base, and so on. There was little about the shooter. There is still little known, just alot of speculation swirling around even among those that knew him.

 

Yesterday the families of the victims were not yet notified, so those names could not be released out of respect for the families only info on conditions. I can see how family and friends would not want to see their loved ones plastered all over the media outlets as they were trying to grieve even once they knew about the loss or injury.

 

I do see your point though about the constant talk of the perpetrator in many instance, and I don't know what the answer is to balance the coverage when things are literally minute to minute of no new news but continuous coverage.

[Sebastian (a lady)]

I'd like to see a news channel that was willing to make its money on considered and accurate reporting of the news. I flipped on the news for a few minutes and there was a commentator opining about how highly trained you would have to be to shoot so many people with handguns (as opposed to a rifle). Uh, no, not really. Close range with a lot of unarmed people is quite a different matter than at a distance against prepared and armed individuals who can take cover.

 

There is a slow food movement, dedicated to the idea that quality food is worth the time and worth the money. I'd love to see slow news, with the meaning that they will take the time to report researched, factually based news, rather than filling the air with blather.

 

I would love to see some analysis of events like this (or balloon boy, or the Mumbai hotel terror attacks) that looked at how much was stated on air that was in fact incorrect speculation.

[NorthwestMom]

The Slow News movement! That's brilliant!

[Laurie4b]

The Slow News movement! That's brilliant!

 

:iagree:

[Laurie4b]

Wow, I have no idea what national news is saying about this. We live near Ft. Hood, so in local news we heard about what was going on inside the base, the fact that the kids there who were in school and daycare were safe and fed awaiting the base to open so parents could get to them, the out pouring of the community to give blood and open churches for those waiting to get back on base, and so on. There was little about the shooter. There is still little known, just alot of speculation swirling around even among those that knew him.

 

Yesterday the families of the victims were not yet notified, so those names could not be released out of respect for the families only info on conditions. I can see how family and friends would not want to see their loved ones plastered all over the media outlets as they were trying to grieve even once they knew about the loss or injury.

 

I do see your point though about the constant talk of the perpetrator in many instance, and I don't know what the answer is to balance the coverage when things are literally minute to minute of no new news but continuous coverage.

 

That's a good point about getting family's permission before running the photos, etc. of their loved ones. (There is also too much "gawking at grieving" in our media.)

[stripe]

I'd like to see a news channel that was willing to make its money on considered and accurate reporting of the news.

I find PBS and NPR and the like provide slow, long reporting with analysis by people who tend to actually know something, rather than just those who like to talk. But they are only partially supported by commercial interests; I think they are too slow to make advertisers a lot of money. Take the CBC (=Canadian) 10 pm news -- it takes them fully 20 min to get to their first commercial break! They have much longer reports and more intelligent discussions.

[Melinda in VT]

I'd like to see a news channel that was willing to make its money on considered and accurate reporting of the news. I flipped on the news for a few minutes and there was a commentator opining about how highly trained you would have to be to shoot so many people with handguns (as opposed to a rifle). Uh, no, not really. Close range with a lot of unarmed people is quite a different matter than at a distance against prepared and armed individuals who can take cover.

 

There is a slow food movement, dedicated to the idea that quality food is worth the time and worth the money. I'd love to see slow news, with the meaning that they will take the time to report researched, factually based news, rather than filling the air with blather.

 

I would love to see some analysis of events like this (or balloon boy, or the Mumbai hotel terror attacks) that looked at how much was stated on air that was in fact incorrect speculation.

 

:iagree:

 

So much of what airs on TV news programs is people talking about what might happen or what maybe happened. I want to know what did happen. If it hasn't happened yet, it's not news.

[Melinda in VT]

I find PBS and NPR and the like provide slow, long reporting with analysis by people who tend to actually know something, rather than just those who like to talk. But they are only partially supported by commercial interests; I think they are too slow to make advertisers a lot of money. Take the CBC (=Canadian) 10 pm news -- it takes them fully 20 min to get to their first commercial break! They have much longer reports and more intelligent discussions.

 

Ooh. We get CBC. I'll have to try that on nights I'm not in bed by 10.

[unsinkable]

Living right across the river from Omaha I lived in fear of another shooting like the one at Von Maur store a couple of years ago since the media did not stop reporting every tidbit . In grotesque , horrid soulless detail. Very little about the survivors some of whom have absolutely done so much for others but that is not titillating.... I think you are on to something here as suicides certainly can cluster and spread as well. This is tragic in every way. I do think that we have elavated explicit violence to a level of depravity unmatched with the advent of the 24 hour news cycle.

 

My brother and his friend were in the mall that day taking their kids to see Santa. :crying:

[Sebastian (a lady)]

I have definitely found that after years of reading The Economist and other news and opinion journals that value detail and analysis that my appetite for things like the evening news or even weeklies like Time and Newsweek is simply gone.

 

We got a subscription to Time in order to use some frequent flyer miles and I keep wondering where the news articles in it are? Strip away the flip columns and the shallow culture pieces and there isn't much left.

[Elizabeth Conley]

I agree.

 

Re: Columbine and bullying, I recently read Columbine, which not only debunks a lot of myths that sprung up (including the idea that they were bullied), but delves into some of the forensic psychology. Interestingly, there is far more evidence that the shooters at Columbine were bullies themselves, not the bullied.

 

You are spot on. The truth is that one of the murderers at Columbine was a stereotypical psychopath, the other was his codependent. These murderers weren't bullied, they were the bullies.

 

The popular drivel about them being bullying victims is just an oft repeated urban myth.

 

Most of the psycho-babble about the perpetrators turns out to be drivel.

 

I wish the media would put more energy into celebrating the competencies of the victims and their families, who often prove to be epic heroes. Those are the stories worth reading.

[PiCO]

I agree. In my small-town newspaper there were pictures of many victims, and a paragraph about each victim. It was very touching and sad. I did not see a picture of the perpetrator.

[mrsrevmeg]

I would love to see less psycho-analyzing of the murderer, who is now immortalized in our media archives. It is always like this: What was going on in his mind? Why not spend more time setting up trust funds and raising money to put toward the survivors' medical expenses and such?

[TravelingChris]

We don't need psychoanalyzing the perp but we do need to find out about him. In this particular case, I want full accountability and a change in attitude. Why was someone who argued with his patients, advocated suicide bombings, was described as rambling and incoherent, had poor performance reviews, etc, etc, being promoted and allowed to practice medicine as a psychiatrist?

[Laurie4b]

Yes, we treat them like a client in a psychoanalytic practice. We learn every detail of their lives-- we make them famous. There is a difference between that and analyzing a profile that helps identify future mass murderers, but the way it's often done in the media can seem almost sympathetic toward their point of view. I'm sure that's how the copycats view it: "Wow. Look how much attention he got. And all of the things he considered injustices get published so that the world can see how wrong they were to mess with him. Showed them." For a certain kind of person, that's a very motivating reward. I'm glad that this guy survived so he can live with the repercussions. I'd like to see a checklist: loner, not good with women, made prior statements criticizing his employer, etc. That impersonal kind of list fits the bill of the kind of analysis that would help prevent future tragedy, and would keep from fueling future tragedy with too much attention to the perp.

 

I wonder if we could ever bring ourselves to use the word ev*l rather than sick to describe the behavior.

[Impish]

Laurie, that's something that I've often wondered about. In today's society, every murderer is 'sick' in some way. How about just plain evil? Why must there be some sort of rationalizing of behaviour, attempt to understand what makes them tick? I firmly believe that some people are just simply evil, and that's the diagnosis, not 'antisocial personality disorder' or 'psychopathic narcissist' etc etc etc. (I'm not saying those don't exist, or that everyone that has that dx is evil...I'm saying that those labels are sometimes applied to explain away evil...or try to).

 

And its not a new phenomenon. Can anyone, without google, name all of Ted Bundy's victims? How about the Green Mile Killer? The Zodiac Killer? Jack the Ripper?

 

We know the criminals...but the victims are lost, their lives taken yet again, as the public remembers them for the murderer's body count.

[Cricket]

Another disturbing trend which goes hand-in-hand with this is the popularity of these slasher movies. I haven't watched any so maybe I'm wrong but it seems to me that the slasher is made out to be the "hero" of the movie. More and more people are fascinated by evil. I think this focus on the killers is more a commentary on our society than on our news organizations.

[Mrs Mungo]

We don't need psychoanalyzing the perp but we do need to find out about him. In this particular case, I want full accountability and a change in attitude. Why was someone who argued with his patients, advocated suicide bombings, was described as rambling and incoherent, had poor performance reviews, etc, etc, being promoted and allowed to practice medicine as a psychiatrist?

 

Well...I think when someone has unsuccessfully tried to leave their military service obligation early acts in such a way, the military often thinks they are just trying to get out of their contract.

[unsinkable]

Well...I think when someone has unsuccessfully tried to leave their military service obligation early acts in such a way, the military often thinks they are just trying to get out of their contract.

 

yeah, like Klinger on MASH.

 

/sarcasm off.

[Mrs Mungo]

yeah, like Klinger on MASH.

 

/sarcasm off.

 

Do you think it's not a valid concern? My husband has had to deal with several instances of soldiers trying to get out of their service obligations in his career.

 

He dealt with a soldier who went through the green to gold program to attend college. However, she had her father call his Congressman and say that she was suicidal to get her out of her service obligation. She had shown no signs of problems before that.

 

We've seen soldiers have affairs, do drugs, get pregnant, all sorts of things. It's a problem that nobody should be surprised about when the military advertises itself as a way to pay for college (especially advanced degrees as in this case) instead of as a career path/way of life. Nobody should be surprised that this happens even more often just before deployments. There are plenty of recruiters who hedge and say things like "oh, we'll make sure you aren't stationed in Iraq" when *nobody* is stationed in Iraq, they are stationed at various posts and then deployed to Iraq.

 

eta (re-pasting):

We don't need psychoanalyzing the perp but we do need to find out about him. In this particular case, I want full accountability and a change in attitude. Why was someone who argued with his patients, advocated suicide bombings, was described as rambling and incoherent, had poor performance reviews, etc, etc, being promoted and allowed to practice medicine as a psychiatrist?

 

Again, he had definitely been trying to get out of his service obligation (which is usually 8 years for that sort of training, I don't know if his recently completed fellowship may have added on to that). Was his ADSO was almost up and he was stop-lossed for the deployment? The trouble is, reporters don't know enough about the military to ask the right questions.

 

The only place I see where he advocated suicide bombings was on the internet and the military isn't monitoring every soldier's internet postings and they were not even 100% sure that he actually posted those things.

 

From one of the stories on this:

Dr Thomas Grieger, who was training director at the centre while Maj Hasan was an intern there, said told AP that he had had "difficulties" that required counselling and extra supervision.

Internet postings

However, Maj Hasan was "mostly very quiet", and never spoke ill of the military or his country, Dr Grieger added.

"He swore an oath of loyalty to the military," he said. "I didn't hear anything contrary to those oaths."

Col Terry Lee, who is retired but said he had worked with Hasan, told Fox that Maj Hasan had often got into arguments with military colleagues who supported the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

 

 

Under what basis would any of this put him out of the military?

Edited November 9, 2009 by Mrs Mungo

[stripe]

There was a report on the Fort Hood community on last night's Newshour on PBS and links to other stories on their website:

http://newshour.pbs.org

[Mom-ninja.]

Yep, I agree.

 

Media cares about ratings and not much else.

[Blessedfamily]

About the media giving mass murderers attention... remember the tapes of the VATech killer? There was quite a backlash when his videotaped rantings were broadcast. It ceased after some very angry responses to it.

[Margaret in GA]

I'd like to see a news channel that was willing to make its money on considered and accurate reporting of the news. I flipped on the news for a few minutes and there was a commentator opining about how highly trained you would have to be to shoot so many people with handguns (as opposed to a rifle). Uh, no, not really. Close range with a lot of unarmed people is quite a different matter than at a distance against prepared and armed individuals who can take cover.

 

There is a slow food movement, dedicated to the idea that quality food is worth the time and worth the money. I'd love to see slow news, with the meaning that they will take the time to report researched, factually based news, rather than filling the air with blather.

 

I would love to see some analysis of events like this (or balloon boy, or the Mumbai hotel terror attacks) that looked at how much was stated on air that was in fact incorrect speculation.

 

I agree with the other posters that NPR/PBS Jim Lehrer is that news source. The day after Ft Hood, I happened to tune in to NPR as they were recapping the day's big headlines. The top story was *not* Ft Hood, it was unemployment hitting 10.2%. Thank you, NPR, for reporting NEWS! What a concept.

 

Margaret

[Tea Time]

Do you think it's not a valid concern? My husband has had to deal with several instances of soldiers trying to get out of their service obligations in his career.

 

Yes, this is definitely always a valid concern, but the real question is if that was the only concern that the military had about releasing him from his obligations or were they concerned about how it would look if they did this for this particular person. I certainly do not know the answer to this question, nor do I expect to ever know the answer, but to think that it is not really the most important question is a mistake.

 

Again, he had definitely been trying to get out of his service obligation (which is usually 8 years for that sort of training, I don't know if his recently completed fellowship may have added on to that). Was his ADSO was almost up and he was stop-lossed for the deployment? The trouble is, reporters don't know enough about the military to ask the right questions.

 

Then either journalism schools are wasting people's money, or you are wrong, and the truth is that journalists don't want to ask the right questions because they do not really want the answers to some questions.

 

So for me, I am more disgusted that we do not have more information rather than less information. The right information would be so helpful if there was a way for us to demand it. I admit this is a quandary since they tend to tell us things we do not need to know and omit the things that matter.

 

It would be very nice for the media to handle things in a different way. Facts, rather than emotional sensationalism, would return us to the roots of journalism; but I am disinclined at this point to suggest to the media that they provide us with less information under the guise of it being "for our own good." They might be far too willing to run with that idea, in fact, they are far too willing to run with that idea. Should we expect the media to shield us because it has such power to influence? At what cost do we expect this service?