Copycat Killers and the Media
Posted by Moonage on 03 Oct 2006 | Tagged as: The Media
Last week a horrible tragedy occurred. A man burst into a school, made all the teachers and boys leave, and methodically saxually assaulted several girls before killing one of the girls and himself.
The media, as usual, was all over it, tripping all over themselves to see who could get the most detail the quickest. Within a matter of hours, we had the gruesome details of what went on inside the classroom. Which, I can assure you, was more than I needed to know. And, made watching the evening news rather uncomfortable in the presence of a small child.
Yesterday, a man stormed an Amish school in Pennsylvania, oredered all the teachers and boys to leave, and proceeded to execute several of the girls before killing himself.
Ya think the media is questioning themselves right now over providing SO much information that it allowed someone with a FUBAR imagination to do exactly what they heard on the tv? I mean, this guy in Pennsylvania didn’t need to plan anyting, the script was dictated to him repeatedly by all major media.
Ya think anyone in media might be thinking right now that their attention to unnecessary detail contributed to the deaths of those children in Pennsylvania?
Ya think?
I don’t. The arrogance of media overwhelms their sense of decency. It’s one thing to know children had died in a school shooting, it’s totally another into the gruesome details of how they died. If media had shown the decency to hold back the details no one needed to know, the copycat in Pennsylvania might not have had the plotline he obviously needed to go by. The media answers to no one. No one but bloggers will question them. But, more often than not, media makes bad decisions of late. And, those bad decisions in this case contributed to the deaths of several small kids in Pennsylvania. And, the nature of copycat crimes being what they are, this might not be over, media made sure to give the next guy who needed a plotline the script he needed to do it, step by step.
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