Grumpy Editor agrees with the growing movement for print and broadcast media to refrain naming mass shooters because it fuels celebrity-style coverage that encourages more violence.
Too many news outlets go into detail with biographical material on trigger-happy gunmen, often anxious to see that information along with photos that sometimes go back to high school days.
A recent Associated Press story by Lisa Marie Pane, mentions Adam Lankford, a criminologist at the University of Alabama who studied the influence of media coverage on shooters, saying it’s vitally important to avoid focusing excessive attention on gunmen.
“A lot of these shooters want to be treated like celebrities," adds Lankford. "They want to be famous. So the key is not to give them that treatment."
The criminologist argues attackers are trying to outdo previous shooters with higher death tolls and media coverage encourages copycats.
James Alan Fox, a professor at Northeastern University who has studied mass shootings, tells AP's Pane that naming shooters is not the problem but it's over-the-top coverage that includes details about the killers, such as their writings and their backgrounds, that “unnecessarily humanizes them.”
Fox adds, “We sometimes come to know more about them --- their interests and their disappointments --- than we do about our next-door neighbors."
Pane reminds that “late last year, the Trump administration’s federal Commission on School Safety called on the media to refrain from reporting names and photos of mass shooters. It was one of the rare moments when gun-rights advocates and gun-control activists agreed."
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