I have always been fascinated with how media organizations handle tragic events such as mass shootings and acts of domestic terrorism, which led to my blog post earlier in the semester on that discussion. I have been tossing a couple of ideas around for my final paper, but I think what I want to do is pursue the ethics of such an angle, because it’s an issue that always seems to eventually be sensationalized in the media with each individual case.
Mother Jones has been conducting an investigation of the dozens of mass shootings that have occurred in the United States that date all the way back to the early 1980s. Each one is organized and detailed chronologically for a user-friendly comparison on the location, the number of victims, the date, the mental state of the shooter, and several other categories. As extensive as this data is, however, it only includes shootings with five or more victims. So for example, last week’s movie theater shooting in Lafayette, La. would not be found on here (even though this data was updated before that incident occurred) because only two people were killed.
Even so, there always seems to be more emphasis on the shooter in everything we see and read and much less on the victims. Look at almost every single one of these cases and the way the events following the shooting play out are mostly similar. Like police detectives and investigators, journalists do everything they can to piece together the shooter’s mental history, family life, or what have you, to attempt to come to a conclusion as to why he or she carried out such a terrible act. Journalists want to provide their readers for possible explanations for why it happened, but is it right for them to almost be seen as justifications? As for the victims, perhaps the most attention they’ll get in the story is when they are laid to rest (especially if it’s a law enforcement officer, for example) and after that, readers hardly hear from them again. I feel like the media makes it so easy to forget the names of victims of these types of tragedies, and so easy to remember the names of the shooters. Names like Adam Lanza and James Holmes and Timothy McVeigh get to a point when they’re almost seared into our memories.
Consider a document specifically addressed to members of the media on another controversial issue to present to the public: suicide. Several accredited mental health organizations such as the Suicide Prevention Resource Center, the National Institute of Mental Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and a few others have all signed off on this document. It concerns how they suggest journalists should handle covering stories of suicide. While it acknowledges that the media plays a role in helping readers and viewers understand the causes, warning signs and treatment tips for suicide, the document warns that “research finds an increase in suicide…when a particular death is reported at length or in many stories…(or) the story of an individual death by suicide is placed on the front page or at the beginning of a broadcast…(or) the headlines about specific suicide deaths are dramatic.” Sure enough, I have noticed that when someone commits suicide (except perhaps for rare cases such as renowned celebrities), these guidelines are taken seriously and the story rarely appears at the front of a publication or broadcast. Or, it might not even be reported on at all, as I know that my own media organization has chosen that route in the past.
For my final paper, I want to explore if similar guidelines exist in cases of mass shootings and terrorist attacks, because if they do, it doesn’t seem that they are followed much. A shooting with multiple victims can occur anywhere in the United States, and it seems to always show up on the front page of every major American newspaper the following day. And, especially in the case of tabloids, such stories will include large, enticing headlines. If there are better ways for journalists to handle these types of stories, then I wonder what strategies those are. If these mental health organizations are suggesting that extensive, in-your-face coverage of suicides would encourage other people to commit similar acts, I wonder if the same is true for people who carry out mass shootings, because it does seem like it’s been happening more and more frequently over the last several years.