Very interesting piece from The Wall Street Journal two days ago, giving much the same advice on getting the mass-shooter meme damped down that I have suggested: stop making them famous.
Ari N. Schulman goes into greater, fascinating, detail and except for a single ill-informed line about "...widespread availability of guns and high-capacity magazines designed more for offense than for defense," he not only gets the idea we've got to stop making these grotty little weasels into antiheroes, he backs it up with psych cites. It's worth a read.
BUILDING A 1:1 BALUN
4 years ago
8 comments:
Dean Ing wrote a book back in the 70s titles Soft Targets in which the same tactic was used against terrorists. The media kicked, of course, but it worked because it was promulgated by the FCC and media bigwigs.
Can't see the media getting behind such a campaign today, unless they become targets of the violence, and doubtful even then.
Anti-heroes... hmmm. When the cache of anti-heroes go up in the greater culture, do murder sprees also increase as a correlation?
NJT: I don't know about murder sprees, but copycat crimes do occur. After the Tylenol tampering of the early 1980s a number of other product poisonings occurred, or were attempted. I don't think it was people trying to emulate an anti-hero (the perp in the Tylenol case was never identified) so much as people thinking, "hey, I could get away with this!"
Very interesting article, thank you for bring it to my attention.
I was surprised by the lack of correlation between mental illness and mass killings.
I have to respectfully disagree with both you and Mr. Shulman regarding the coverage of these tragedies. Having the police and media cover up details of the crime is a little to close to pulling a Zumbo on the First Amendment. I believe in free speech but....
I'm not sure a cover up would even work that well. In the absence of fact, rumor runs rampant. Look at all the conspiracy theories that inevitably crop up after each incident.
Rob
Rob
Rob: I'm not sure what's being suggested is covering up a story, at least I hope not for the same reason you give. But broadcasting the helicopter footage of police storming a building while the suspect's name scrolls across the bottom of the screen as the network's expert drones on about the previous mass shooting every half hour on four different news channels is a LOT of publicity.
Bingo, Dave H. It's not don't cover them -- but it doesn't have to dominate nation news for weeks, either.
There was an NCIS episode that covered this nicely...ah yes, "Murder 2.0", the CyberVid Killer.
But if it doesn't dominate the news for weeks, how would they keep up the anti-gun propaganda?
Post a Comment