The media should stop making school shooters famous

Advocates have been pushing for changes surrounding mass shooting reporting for years. After Parkland, let’s act.

The perpetrator in the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, is already a household name, although I will not name him here.

He was arrested a couple of miles from the school after he killed, in a matter of minutes, 17 people and wounded 15 others.

First came the images of him being taken into custody. Then came the footage of him being led from a patrol car into the processing center. Soon, his name was released, and with very few exceptions, it was immediately incorporated into news channels’ onscreen graphics and in the commentary of anchors and reporters. In the days that followed, the perpetrator’s name and image permeated headlines and pervaded coverage.

Focusing on the perpetrators of school shootings and other mass shootings has been a longstanding practice in the media. This was particularly evident with the 1999 Columbine High School shooting. The extensive coverage of the two perpetrators made them not only famous but even, in some quarters, folk heroes of a sort, particularly among deeply alienated students.

Nearly 20 years later, these two people, who turned their guns on themselves, have amassed a cult following (known as the Columbiners), and other shooting perpetrators have referred to them by name in manifestos they have left behind.

There are a number of problems with the intense media focus on mass shooting perpetrators. First, they are explicitly seeking fame, and the media is helping them to achieve this end. The realization that this route to fame “works” can, in turn, produce more lethal events and foster one-upmanship among perpetrators.

The copycat effect is real. A 2015 study suggests that a mass shooting increases the likelihood of an additional mass shooting in the two-week period following the incident.

A more recent study was less supportive of the thesis of short-term contagion but still cautioned that the media coverage of these attacks might well lead to copycat events over a longer period.

An ABC News investigation in 2014 found that in the 14 years after Columbine, at least 17 school shooters — and 36 other students who threatened rampages that were averted —directly cited the Columbine shooting or its perpetrators as partial motivation for the attack. In short, making perpetrators famous has consequences.

The birth of the “No Notoriety” campaign

Following the 2012 shooting at an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater, in which 12 people died and 70 or so others were wounded, Tom and Caren Teves — whose son, Alex, was among those killed — created the No Notoriety campaign. As in the Columbine case, the Aurora perpetrator had quickly become a household name, far better known than any one of his victims. (To his credit, Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper declined to say that name.)

The goal of the campaign is to challenge the media to limit the use of the perpetrators’ name and image to a few constrained circumstances. Certainly, the name and image should be publicized if the identity is known but the criminal hasn’t been apprehended. If he or she is caught at the scene, or dies in the attack, then it’s appropriate to mention the name directly after the police make it public. But after that: If not quite a blackout, then a careful rationing.

Don’t use the name in headlines, and don’t splash photographs across news pages. Limit mention of the name to once per story, if it must be used. (In recent discussions, the Teveses have argued for the use of the word “perpetrator” over synonyms like “shooter,” because of the word’s dullness, its banality.)

The Teveses also asked the media not to publish or broadcast self-serving materials produced by the perpetrators like manifestos or social media postings.

A similar proposal, the “Don’t Name Them” campaign, has been put forward by the FBI in conjunction with the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training program at Texas State University, and the I Love U Guys Foundation, which honors Emily Keyes, who was killed at Platte Canyon High School in 2006.

The title of an academic article by two criminologists who support proposals along these lines speaks for itself: “Don’t Name Them, Don’t Show Them, But Report Everything Else.” These advocates seek to place the emphasis back on the victims, survivors, the communities, and the first responders.

Yes, the proposals go against the grain of press traditions. But they wouldn’t hurt the dissemination of useful information.

A potential counterargument to the No Notoriety campaign and others like it is that they undercut the public’s right to be fully informed about important events — undermining “the public’s right to know.” Some have argued that limiting reporting of the details about a perpetrator could make it harder to come up with sound policy responses (since doing so relies on understanding the attacks in their full context). Some may even hear a call to limit First Amendment protections.

The reality is that no one that has crafted these campaigns or who supports them, as I do, wants the public to be denied information about shootings. As I mentioned, backers of No Notoriety support the initial reporting of the perpetrator’s name and believe the public should learn about his or her demographic profile, mindset, and motivation.

The media do not have to choose between reporting the facts and reporting responsibly. Instead, the ideal coverage would emphasize the how of the attack (the methods through which the perpetrator was able to carry it out) and the why (motivation, mindset). This can be done without talking about the who. And all of this can be accomplished while referring to “the perpetrator.”

CNN’s Anderson Cooper has been known to follow these guidelines, and he’s not alone, but most of the media has ignored them. But the media has exercised restraint in other cases — demonstrating that change is possible. They’ve voluntarily changed how they report about suicide, after researchers presented evidence that coverage of suicide can create a contagion.

There’s a growing acceptance of the idea that reporting on suicides that don’t have extraordinary news value can be counterproductive. And some news organizations have embraced the recommendations of advocacy groups including the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and the World Health Organization: They advise publications to limit details related to the method of suicide, not giving such stories premium placement, and providing suicide prevention resources along with the news.

Finland provides a model that the American media might take note of. After two school shootings in the towns of Jokela (2007) and Kauhajoki (2008), media organizations examined their practices and made some changes. The Finnish media had publicized the perpetrators’ manifestos — which, not so ironically, referenced the Columbine attackers — and provided wall-to-wall coverage of the killers. In the end, Finnish journalists adopted a policy similar to those proposed in the No Notoriety campaign. Some journalists protested, but the changes have largely stuck.

Many readers say they’d embrace the change

Some networks and newspapers may worry that they’d lose readers if they did not show photographs of the perpetrators, or use their names. But recent research conducted by my team and I found that six in 10 news consumers said they’d still follow the coverage of these events if the No Notoriety format were adopted nationally. Strikingly, 80 percent of the respondents said they believed that the media coverage of mass shootings can lead to copycat attacks, and nearly 70 percent said they found media coverage of shootings overly sensational.

Experts can play a role in prompting this change too. I make it a condition, when I speak to a TV reporter about a mass shooting, that when the interview is shown, no footage of the perpetrator appears and his or her name is not spoken. (Unfortunately, while reporters will understand the reasoning and agree, stations sometimes will ignore the request.)

Mass and school shootings, by their very nature, are extraordinarily sensational and will generate public interest that can only be sated by the media. With such a significant role, the need for responsible behavior is heightened. By adopting the No Notoriety policy, the media can play a small but crucial role in reducing the likelihood of another tragedy like Parkland.

Jaclyn Schildkraut is an assistant professor in the department of public justice at the State University of New York at Oswego. She is the author of Mass Shootings: Media, Myths, and Realities. Find her on Twitter @jschildkraut80.

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