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I haven't read the whole thread because I was sort of trying to shut most of the story out.
I want to ask though if anyone else thinks that the kind of media attention that mass shootings get actually contribute to future ones?
With the apparent references to the Columbine killers as "martyrs," it seems that the Virginia Tech killer has that in mind as a precedent.
I get a sense that crazy guys like this want to top the previous killings and the 100% news saturation contributes to this obsession, I think.
It's not that I want to externally limit the freedom of the press, but it seems that more self regulation might be in order to avoid sensationalizing the already horrific.
Perhaps if stories were limited to print media without video or picture links, maybe.
I don't think we really need to know what it looked like. We don't need to see the carnage. We should be able to emphasize with the dead and suffering without images of them.
I think the killers are completely responsible for their actions, and I'm not shifting responsibility to the media. But if we know that a certain kind of coverage seems to feed the monsters' disease, what compelling reason is there to cover the story in the same manner that may have feed the current case?
(The monster in this case incorporated the media into his killing spree. He mailed the tape between the two shooting locations. Shouldn't we learn from that? Maybe that the constant coverage is indecent?)
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