Media and copycats
The question of how we are harmed by viewing real as opposed to staged violence is the main ethics issue raised by coverage of the shootings in Virginia, but there are others. One is the attention paid to the perpetrator.
During the spate of school shootings in the late 1990s, there was much discussion of whether news coverage of each incident spawned copycats. If, the thinking went, these shooters were motivated, in part, by the desire to see their faces and their words on the front pages of newspapers and in the lead stories on the evening news, perhaps news organizations would do better to ignore them and focus on the victims.
Yet, as ever, we are seeing multiple images of Flanagan, including a dramatic, if blurry shot of him firing his gun, and even a quote from a letter in which he expressed his admiration for the shooters at Columbine High School and Virginia Tech University.
As the afternoon wore on, ABC’s homepage led with “What we know about suspect in on-air shooting” and NBC’s with “Human Powder Keg: Gunman Says Discrimination.”
Certainly we humans have always been fascinated with the criminal mind – with what makes transgressors tick. But is the possible role of the news media in inspiring copycat criminals even part of the newsroom discussion anymore?