Its time #journos decide ethical standard for ID’ing campus shooters. They do it for attn; We have a part in that. #collegemedia @spj_tweets
— Candace Baltz (@CandaceBaltz) October 2, 2015
Don’t take my word that mass killers seek media attention through violence. Take the word of the mass killer who attacked this week in Roseburg, Ore.:
Seems the more people you kill, the more your’re in the limelight.
That’s what this week’s killer du jour wrote about the August killer du jour in Virginia, who sought the limelight by doing his killing on live television and boasting about it on social media.
I don’t think that media cause mass killings any more than guns cause mass killings or violent entertainment causes mass killings or mental illness causes mass killings. Our nation’s violence sprees have complex causes and require complex, multiple solutions that will involve legislation, regulation, voluntary action and effective enforcement.
I don’t blog about all of the segments of society that contribute to the causes and might contributed to solutions. But I do blog about journalism, and it’s undeniable that the limelight that journalism provides is an incentive that appeals to mass killers.
I’ve made the points before (see the links below) and won’t belabor them here. But I want to note that every media organization that named this violent man and published his photograph provided the limelight that he sought and provided an incentive to the next twisted, heavily armed man who seeks it.
Maybe he was just a dangerous person whose desire for the limelight would have been satisfied with all the attention to his carnage and the victims and his turn refueling the never-ending arguments about gun control, even if no one ever spoke his name. And, of course, some would speak his name, because even if the news media acted in unison (as we never do), it would circulate on social media and in gossip in his own community.
But what is undeniable is that professional news organizations provide most of the limelight with our constant repetition of killers’ names and our constant showing of their photographs and constant publication of their rants about imagined grievances. The name of the Virginia TV killer was used in the headline of the Oregon killer’s post linked above and he described consuming the media coverage and reading the other killer’s “manifesto,” which is a fancy word for rant. Without question, media coverage of that killing provided incentive for this killer to go out in his own flash of bloody, demented glory.
Journalists need to discuss the incentives and rewards we provide to attention-seeking mass killers. I hope that some journalism organizations and conferences will address this topic. It’s the huge hole in our recent updates and discussions of journalism ethics. I’m willing and eager to join that discussion as a panelist or speaker. Or I’ll just keep blogging about it here.
I don’t think these are simple questions and I recognize valid arguments disagreeing with mine on this issue. My default setting is to answer each of the 5 W’s in a story, and who is the first of those. I don’t advocate lightly that we withhold such important names from stories. But we withhold names for other reasons, and I think we need more conversation about whether we should withhold the limelight from mass killers. I’m not suggesting we don’t report on these tragedies, or examine the issues they raise. But we can do that without names and photographs of those seeking attention.
Why is denying the limelight to mass killers a less compelling reason to withhold a name and photo from news stories than protecting the privacy of rape victims or shielding government sources from accountability?
Here are my earlier posts on identification of attention-seeking mass murders:
The Gazette had a profile of the shooter above the fold on page 1 this morning. Seeing his name and mug shot there made me feel a little ill.
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I’m not trying to criticize editors who make these calls differently than I would. I wish I’d come to my personal viewpoint on this matter while I was an editor, so I could say that I did it. But it was 2+ years after I left the Gaz that I realized how much we were being played by attention-seeking mass killers.
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There’s a great sentiment behind the withholding movement, but it’s hard to get past the basic gap.
“Someone just killed several people.”
“How awful. Who did it?”
“I know, but I can’t tell you.”
Still, there’s definitely a need to think seriously about responsible news gathering and dissemination, and I believe that’s the context for this debate.
At what point does harm outweigh reporting?
Should a victim and a suspect have equal weight in a story? Should their photos be displayed side by side?
Does airing the suspect’s name and photo every time there’s a reference to the crime glorify him/her (which is a different argument than whether to report the name at all)?
As someone who now has CNN playing all day over his head at work, I believe repetition is a factor.
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I think repetition should be part of the discussion. That fake dialogue you started with would be more relevant if the name meant something. But usually you don’t answer in conversation with the name anyway. You answer with a description, because no one knew who this guy was until he started shooting. And, in that fake dialogue, my answer wouldn’t be, “I know, but I can’t tell you.” My answer would be, “Someone seeking attention. So I’m not even going to mention his name. He’s not worthy of my attention.”
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I look forward to more of the reasoned, balanced discussion of this issue I’ve seen since this sheriff became apparently one of the first (Oregonian story) to take such a stand. I have butted heads with Mr. Buttry over this several times in the past, fearing that the ultimate version of this would be to leave young people going “Adolf Who”? After all, who was a worse mass murderer? I just fear that in today’s Blame Society, this is just another way folks blame the media and/or government for complex problems with no easy solutions that aren’t simplistic feel good answers that really just open up a host of new questions and issues. If responsible media outlets don’t weigh and balance but decide – or worse yet, are forbidden – from providing valid, factual information because it might spark a copycat, then it leaves a huge, yawning gap – in “nature abhors a vacuum” fashion – for the social media rumormongers and axe-grinders to put out incomplete, false or brutal info and for their claims of truth to go unchallenged. And who’s to say that the madman with the gun won’t do more of what we saw in the live-TV crew shooting and go AROUND the media to make THEMSELVES known? As in, “you don’t have to tell them my name – I’LL DO IT.” Sometimes, simple answers are simplistic and not an answer at all. (Then there’s the idea that govt. the media or society can fix every problem, right every wrong, prevent bad things, etc.) IMHO.
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Barney, I don’t consider civil discussions like we’ve had to be butting heads. And I never suggested not naming genocidal despots. And I never suggested forbidding publication of names. And my only use of the word “simple” was to acknowledge that these matters aren’t simple (so I edited your comment to take out the quotation marks, since you didn’t identify whom you were quoting and you certainly weren’t quoting me. For that matter, I removed a lot of quotation marks from your post because none of them quoted my name. I usually delete inaccurate posts, but this one didn’t actually attribute your quotes to me. I presume you’re quoting some unnamed them. So I chose to edit out the quotation marks. If you want to provide attribution, I’ll be happy to edit again.
I won’t address all of your points, because I think both of our arguments stand on their own merits. But let’s take the example of naming rape survivors: Media aren’t forbidden from identifying them, but most media decide in most cases not to report them, unless the survivor decides to go on the record, because we recognize that public identification of all rape survivors in criminal cases might diminish the motivation for some survivors to report the crimes against them to police. Does this protect the privacy of all rape survivors? No, many are identified by word of mouth and/or in social media. Does it cure the social ill that rape is? No, but it’s right and it’s what we can do.
I don’t suggest that the social ill of gun violence has simple solutions. In fact, I explicitly listed factors other than media, over which I can have little or no influence. But I do have a voice in discussions of journalism ethics. So I propose that we exercise some news judgment: If a mass killer’s behavior is attention-seeking, I think media should refuse to be played. It’s not much, but it’s right and it’s what we can do.
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Thanks Steve (and why can I never remember if it’s beyoo-tree or butt-tree? Not that my spelling of the second pronouncer is very nice;-) – I just read a great David Brooks column on the ‘common beliefs’ (mostly not true) about why so many folks are in prison, and this graf seemed very apropos in a more universal fashion, as a moderator of 10,000 comments a month (!) on our Website – and as, in this case, everyone in the world becomes media ethicists: “Everybody is railing against the political establishment and experts and experienced politicians. But social problems are invariably more complex than they look. The obvious explanation for most problems is often wrong. It takes experience and craftsmanship to design policies that grapple with the true complexity of reality.” But in the white-hot front-line of social media discourse, we can be swept away like … a barricade in today’s South Carolina flooding. The trick is to find something firm to hold of, and inch ourselves forward. Those dirty words “compromise” and “consensus” (yeah I’m heavy on quote marks, didn’t mean to imply sourcing!) are the only path with any chance of success. And for that, many have to get out of their philosophical foxholes and concede that the “evil other side” might have a point worth considering.
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It’s pronounced BUTT-tree. But whatever you call me, I’ve been called worse.
Only point I want to make here is that the only “evil other side” I see here is people with guns. It pisses me off that they play the media so easily (and many of them, including the Oregon guy, are explicit in their desire for media attention).
I recognize that these are tough calls for editors, news directors, etc., and I respect people who decide differently about this than I do. But I hope they think about it each time they get played.
I regret that I came to this position after my two stints as top editor. I wish I had done this at least once and learned from the reactions of the community and staff. I’m not sure that the position I advocate is right. But I am certain that killers seeking attention play the media, and that makes me sick. We need to discuss this, rather than continually getting played.
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Philip Kennicott discussed this recently in the Washington Post:
Quick: Name the last five mass killers who received widespread media attention: the young, white male racist who killed nine at a church in Charleston, S.C.; the young male narcissist who exulted in a video testimonial that he was “the true alpha male” before killing a half-dozen people in Isla Vista, Calif.; the Fort Hood gunman, who killed three in 2014; the Navy Yard killer, who murdered a dozen people in 2013; or the young man who killed five people before being himself killed at Santa Monica College in 2013. Extra credit if you can dredge up the name of the psychopathic young man who killed 20 children in Newtown, Conn., in 2012.
Their names, in fact, are rapidly lost to memory.
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Simply put: There are too many names to remember, and there will be many more.
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If mainstream news organizations adopt the “no notoriety” pledge, it will be primarily a symbolic act, a kind of ritual performed to show sympathy, and political correctness, with little real impact.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/essay-refusing-to-say-a-killers-name-is-no-more-than-symbolic-empowerment/2015/10/02/2cd2cf7c-6923-11e5-9ef3-fde182507eac_story.html
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I remembered all the names, though I won’t mention them, for obvious reasons. For good measure, I remembered the name of the brother originally misidentified by too many media as the Newtown killer. I’m not saying that refusing to give attention-seeking mass killers the limelight they seek will stop such violence. But we’ll never know, and if it stopped one killer from seeking the limelight that way, I’ll take that. But most news organizations’ policy of not naming rape survivors (unless they go on the record) doesn’t stop rape either. We do it because it’s right and because it’s what we can do.
One way I know an argument is weak is when someone uses the “political correctness” card. That’s a bullshit argument in most cases, often used to justify offensive language. In this case, it’s inaccurate and irrelevant to post in the context of my blog post. (I know it’s Kennicott’s phrase, not yours, but you quoted him in this context.) “Political correctness” implies that a position is popular, taken to conform with expectations, rather than speaking boldly and bluntly. I write this blog for journalists, and my position on this issue is not at all popular with journalists, as you can see from the comments here and comments to me about it on Twitter. Call my suggestion symbolic if you want. That might be accurate, but I’ll bet you (and Kennicott) support lots of symbolic acts. But I call bullshit on the PC charge. That’s just name-calling (and inaccurate name-calling when posted in the context of a journalism discussion).
I’ll also disagree on the “ritual performed to show sympathy” point, but I think that’s more a misunderstanding than a cheap shot, like the PC comment. I am deeply sympathetic to people who lose loved ones in violence. I lost a family member to violence (in war, not mass murder), and I wouldn’t apologize for showing sympathy. But that’s not my motivation here at all. My motivation is that I get almost physically sick to my stomach every time I read or watch these killers’ desperate pleas for attention and see how easily they play the media. I have worked for editors who refused to cover newsworthy protests in their communities because they said the protesters were just seeking attention. But they apparently are fine with being played for suckers by attention-seeking mass killers.
This is not a matter of sympathy or symbolism to me. Almost every news organization I know of withholds newsworthy names from publication frequently: because reporters promised not to name a newsworthy source’s name, because of the rape situation I already mentioned and for other reasons. Maybe in the most serious watchdog cases and in the rape example, the reasons are similarly valid to my argument that the twisted glory we provide mass killers is a motivation/reward we should deny them. But no one has cited to me a better reason.
The inability of smart people like you and Kennicott and Barney to provide better arguments for identifying mass killers is pretty telling.
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A small distinction, but I was quoting the “political correctness” argument, not endorsing it. I did not want to truncate the quoted sentence.
The other quoted comments I submitted, from Bob Collins, dealt more closely with the journalistic issues. Rather than invoking “political correctness,” he uses the phrase “a patriarchal role that treats an intelligent audience as children, incapable of operating the on/off button.”
As for rape victims, Geneva Overholser has made a strong argument for naming rape victims as an empowerment and de-shaming move. We don’t give mass killers power when we name them. We provide facts.
This was Karin Klein in the Los Angeles Times:
And yes, I’m using the name. Because attempting to erase facts, even facts that pain and anger us, doesn’t make them go away. This is an understandable but futile attempt to get back at the killer, who in a sense escaped justice by killing himself. It provides the illusion of taking action against him, though it is too late for any such action.
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But let’s not pretend that a vengeful attempt to blot the killer from memory will make anything better. We wish he’d never been born. But we can’t escape the fact that he was, and that his crimes devastated people’s lives — and that he was a person with a name and an identity, however twisted it was. His name is part of the public record; such information has always had an important place in criminal investigations. Imagine if police actually managed to keep the identity secret; people with information about him, or any accomplices, wouldn’t know that they had something potentially useful to share with investigators.
Another line of argument holds that society will somehow prevent future horrors like this by showing other angry, mentally ill would-be killers that they won’t become famous by carrying out their terrible fantasies. That’s not going to work. For one thing, killers know better. The names of perpetrators are public information; they’ll come out, one way or the other. And — these people are, for the most part, angry and mentally ill. These aren’t reasonable decisions they make.
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/opinion-la/la-ol-oregon-gunman-name-20151004-story.html
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I did note, Hal, that it was Kennicott’s phrase, not yours. I’ve edited, though, to make that more clear. Klein made no original points and didn’t even address any arguments I’ve made (“vengeful attempt to blot the killer from memory” isn’t my motivation, and I doubt it’s the sheriff’s or anyone else’s; it’s just another straw man). So I won’t bother to address her further.
But Klein’s parroting of the same arguments everyone else is making underscores that it’s bullshit to call this political correctness in a journalism context. The political correctness within journalism is to trumpet the report-the-news position (even though we always decide some news not to report). Did the PiPress (or the LA Times or WaPo or MPR) publish videos of terrorists beheading Americans?
And Geneva Overholser isn’t necessarily the best example to use here. Her newspaper didn’t name rape survivors without their consent. She asked someone to come forward and the Register told a hell of a story as a result. But her first column on this story, back in 1989, said, “Indeed, the policy of my newspaper is not to use the name of rape victims. Yet I surely wish it could be otherwise.” http://www.nytimes.com/1989/07/11/opinion/why-hide-rapes.html
Just as she wished that society didn’t shame rape victims, I wish that violent vermin with guns didn’t seek the “limelight” and play the media by killing people. But we have to make ethical decisions in the circumstances we live in. And Geneva respected rape survivors’ preference for privacy, and I disrespect mass killers’ preference for the limelight.
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A similar approach by Bob Collins at Minnesota Public Radio News:
Quick: Name the shooter at Sandy Hook Elementary. The chances are pretty good that you don’t recall that it’s [name deleted]. But you remember what [name deleted] did.
This belief about copycats, by the way, is also the reason you have no idea how many high school kids take their own lives in Minnesota every year. The media doesn’t tell you in the belief it would lead to copycat suicides. And yet, kids keep taking their own lives.
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The most important question a news story can answer is “why”. That’s where a name comes in.
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We all suffer when news organizations withhold pertinent information either in the pursuit an agenda or in the playing of a patriarchal role that treats an intelligent audience as children, incapable of operating the on/off button.
http://blogs.mprnews.org/newscut/2015/10/why-its-ok-to-name-a-mass-murderer/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
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OK, more straw-man arguments. The actions and words of many, many mass killers confirm without a doubt that they are seeking their moment in the “limelight” (again, that’s the Oregon killer’s word). And I guarandamntee you that everyone in this country knew that Connecticut vermin’s name for months after he wreaked his damage (and lots knew it when Kennicott and Collins asked). That was what the infamy he wanted, and the media obliged. I don’t think he thought he’d be remembered forever. By the way, I deleted the Connecticut vermin’s name from your earlier comment because I’m not publishing those names here.
And the suicide thing? Actually, suicides do come in clusters, and news coverage does contribute to the clustering: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/05/01/newspaper-suicide-clusters/8573239/ This is a long-studied phenomenon, and media do not fully agree on how to address it.
But the notion that we should do what’s right only if it’s going to solve a problem entirely is another symptom of a weak argument. We don’t report on corruption because we’re going to solve the problem of corruption (and we haven’t). We report on corruption because it’s the right thing to do. And thinking about whether our usual reporting standards would exacerbate horrible situations in society — such as rape or suicide or mass shootings — is the right thing to do, too.
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This may be a relatively weak argument in this context:
“We don’t report on corruption because we’re going to solve the problem of corruption (and we haven’t). We report on corruption because it’s the right thing to do.”
And we name names when we do. We’re apparently not worrying about giving potentially corruptible people ideas when we do so.
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Speaking of weak arguments. Take an argument from one context and put it in another. I already used the rape-survivor situation (where most media don’t name names). Let’s take another case, though, where media didn’t report names (or even the news, which I’ve never suggested) because they thought it was the right thing to do: Not even reporting on the abduction of David Rohde: https://stevebuttry.wordpress.com/2012/12/15/news-orgs-should-deny-mass-killers-the-attention-they-crave/
Did the media’s decision not to report that solve the problem of kidnapping of journalists? No, they did it because it was the right thing to do, like protecting the privacy of rape survivors, and reporting on corruption, and refusing to be played by mass killers.
If you think anyone commits corruption to get attention, we can discuss this further. But if not, I’ll leave that weak argument to speak for itself.
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“If you think anyone commits corruption to get attention, we can discuss this further.”
My response was directed to the “contagion” copycat argument, not the attention-getting one.
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Either way, it’s a stretch. We may have talked this one out. I get that I haven’t changed your mind.
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True, but I have enjoyed the discussion
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I always enjoy our discussions, Hal.
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I recently was thinking about this as well – albeit with a bit of historical curiosity. https://medium.com/@digidave/infamy-in-the-age-of-the-internet-3ae37ae11dc
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Excellent points, as usual, Dave. Historical context is important. So is current context (infamy of previous killers motivates next killers).
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[…] I’ve noted in earlier posts about identifying mass killers, I don’t like indulging attention-seekers, and these trolls clearly relish attention, even if […]
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[…] Last year’s Oregon mass killer wrote that he was seeking the same sort of attention as the Virginia gunman had received. […]
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