CNN shared speculation with viewers in the wake of the Sandy Hook attack.
After the 1999 Columbine massacre, in an article that ran in Extra! (7–8/99; reprinted from the Village Voice, 5/5/99) Jason Vest cited “people like Park Dietz and David Phillips, whose studies have found that news reports—not movies or video games—are the prime media mover in begetting copycats.”
“I actually wrote a long series of suggested guidelines for the World Health Organization that would make stories like this less likely to be imitated without making it so the stories disappeared from the paper,” Phillips told Vest. “You have to think of these stories as a sort of advertisement to mass murder.”
In 2012, after the Sandy Hook elementary school mass murder, sociologist Zeynep Tufekci wrote an Atlantic piece (12/19/12) offering tentative media guidelines for preventing mass murder contagion. Noting that “we know from research in many fields that establishing a path of action—a complete narrative in which you can visualize your steps and their effects—is important in enabling follow-through,” Tufekci suggested that:
Law enforcement should not release details of the methods and manner of the killings, and those who learn those details should not share them. In other words, there should be no immediate stories about which guns exactly were used or how much robocop gear was utilized. There should be no extensive timelines—no details about which room was entered first or which victim was killed second. In particular, there should be no reporting of the killer’s words, or actions before or during the shooting.
She went on to advocate that “the killer should not be profiled extensively, at least not at first…. We do not need to know which exact video games they played, what they wore or what their favorite bands were.”
Since 2012, when Tufekci offered her guidelines “as fodder for a conversation that I hope will be taken up by media and mental health experts,” public mass shootings have accelerated—as you would expect them to do if copycats are inspiring copycats in a feedback loop. Perhaps it’s time to have that conversation about how media contribute to a cycle of mass violence—and how a different style of reporting on such violence might help put an end to it.
