I am surprised this article was allowed, so that is why I gave full credits and presented it exactly how it appeared, because these are the type that end up disappearing for myriads of reasons. It appeared on social media on the 17th of Nov, 2017 prior to the following days' WSJ edition on the 18th (Saturday).
This is what we've been knowing the whole time. Our politics and media are so evil that they only care about statistics and proof; so they create chaos, literally, simply for facts. That is one major difference between wisdom and knowledge. Same thing when a city won't install a stop sign until there have been at least 3 fatalities in a given location. Do you believe media and government actually are concerned for you? They are actually not allowed to. Ideals are un welcome. Some of you think this is stupid but my faith is only in Jesus. People will help you for a little while but as they say, all good things come to an end. But God and perfection last through eternity.
How Not to Cover Mass Shootings
The often sensationalistic media attention given to perpetrators is central to why massacres are happening more.
By Ari N. Schulman
Nov. 17, 2017 1:02 p.m. ET
ILLUSTRATION: DOUG CHAYKA
It isn’t your imagination: Mass shootings are getting deadlier and more frequent. A recent FBI report on “active shooters” from 2000 to 2015 found that the number of incidents more than doubled from the first to the second half of the period. Four of the five deadliest shootings in American history happened in the past five years, and 2017 already far exceeds any previous year for the number of casualties.
Though we seem to be plunging ever deeper into a dark night, researchers now have a far clearer view of a key factor in the violence. A long-standing theory has matured into a body of evidence that can no longer be dismissed: The level of attention paid to mass shootings is central to why they keep happening.
The idea that some crimes might be self-spreading, like a disease, was proposed as early as 1890, when the French sociologist Gabriel Tarde labeled murders copying Jack the Ripper “suggesto-imitative assaults.” For mass shootings, the effect was well known among researchers by the early 2000s, when a wealth of information allowed forensic psychiatrist Paul E. Mullen to conclude, “These massacres are acts of mimesis, and their perpetrators are imitators.”
But the research has solidified in just the last few years. In 2015, a pair of studies analyzed databases cataloging nearly all U.S. mass shootings. They produced the first comprehensive statistical evidence that shootings occur in clusters rather than randomly across time.
One of the studies, led by mathematician Sherry Towers of Arizona State University, used a contagion model previously applied to analyze viral videos and terrorist attacks. It found that the likelihood of a mass shooting is significantly higher when another mass shooting has recently occurred. The period of increased probability lasts, on average, for 13 days, the study found. (Notably, Dr. Towers did not find a contagion effect for shootings in which three or fewer people were killed.) The other study, conducted by Fresno State criminologist Jason Kissner, employed a different statistical modeling technique but also found an increased likelihood lasting for a similar period.
Media pressed in a day after the Dec. 14, 2012 killing of 20 schoolchildren in Newtown, Conn. by a lone gunman. PHOTO: ERIC THAYER/REUTERS
These findings are not yet conclusive. A study published in July by criminologist Adam Lankford and psychologist Sara Tomek, both of the University of Alabama, claimed that the clustering effects were not significantly different from random variation. The question of whose modeling technique is more accurate remains open. Dr. Lankford believes that the copycat effect is real, but he argues that only specific documentation of how mass shootings were inspired by previous ones can prove it. Researchers have begun to construct better accounts of the kind that Dr. Lankford favors, systematically compiling evidence that particular mass shooters praised or studied prior shooters. In 2016, psychologist Peter Langman published an astonishing chart showing the web of influence extending out just from the 1999 Columbine shooting. To follow just one thread: The Columbine shooters were described as “martyrs” by the 2007 Virginia Tech Shooter, who was in turn admired by the 2008 Northern Illinois University shooter, who was in turn closely studied by the 2012 Newtown shooter, who was in turn referred to as “godlike” by the 2015 Umpqua Community College shooter.
Some of the most significant research has come from a journalist, Mother Jones reporter Mark Follman. In a pair of 2015 articles, Mr. Follman outlined the extensive evidence for the copycat and contagion effects, tracing 89 deaths to copycat shooters who directly cited Columbine as inspiration.
This work has led to some perceptible changes in media coverage. Cable news hosts Anderson Cooper, Megyn Kelly, and Lawrence O’Donnell have all stated their commitment to avoid glorifying shooters. In a segment last month on NPR’s Morning Edition, the hosts reported on the Las Vegas shooting without using the perpetrator’s name. Government officials have made a point of not repeating shooters’ names in press conferences following the Orlando nightclub shooting, the Umpqua shooting, and this month’s Sutherland Springs shooting.
Kelly McBride, vice president of the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, has for years criticized calls for media restraint in such coverage. But this year, she and Poynter endorsed a set of best-practice guidelines specifically aimed at avoiding the contagion effect. They include naming the perpetrator only when necessary, avoiding potentially glorifying images and eschewing superlatives such as “deadliest ever” to promote coverage. Reached by email, Ms. McBride said, “As researchers have surfaced more sophisticated ideas about contagion, I’ve worked with them to ensure that the recommendations dovetail with sound journalistic practice.”
But restraint remains the exception rather than the norm. The Poynter guidelines have received limited attention, and there is little evidence that they have changed reporting practices. Top editors and standards officials at media outlets aren’t doing much to address evidence of the contagion effect.
Last year the Washington Post blogger Erik Wemple asked various publications to respond to the idea of following the TV news hosts by not identifying the Orlando nightclub shooter. Editors from the Post, the Huffington Post and the New York Times all demurred (though the Huffington Post said it was limiting the use of his name and photo). None of them addressed the contagion issue. When NPR Standards & Practices editor Mark Memmott noted the radio hosts who had refrained from using the Las Vegas shooter’s name, he cited only concern for listener feelings as a reason for doing so.
An NPR spokesperson declined to comment for this article, and CNN standards editors did not return requests for comment. A spokesperson for the Wall Street Journal said, “We believe our primary obligation is to inform. We believe in the crucial importance of accuracy, especially in fast-moving situations, as well as sensitivity towards victims.”
Disputes remain among researchers about how journalists should change their approach. An open letter signed by 149 researchers in October, spearheaded by Dr. Lankford, asks only for restraint in using the names and images of shooters, with no limit on other details; they stress the need to thwart a would-be shooter’s desire for notoriety. Others focus on sensationalist accounts of the crimes themselves. By email, University of North Carolina sociologist Zeynep Tufekci bemoaned the replaying of “films of panicked people with gunshots in the background...essentially, a snuff film made exactly so it would be played on loop,” and play-by-plays of shooters’ methods.
A further problem is the adversarial approach that advocates often take, telling members of the media, in effect, how to do their jobs while castigating them for chasing after audience numbers. Many journalists understandably resent such challenges to their professional integrity and see the advocates as censors who want to suppress difficult truths.
In 2015, when a gunman who killed two people in Roanoke, Va., broadcast video of the act styled like a first-person-shooter video game, the New York Daily News published the images on the front page. Gawker’s Sam Biddle answered critics of the cover by praising the paper’s bravery. In a Los Angeles Times piece last week, senior editorial writer Michael McGough briefly pointed to questions unanswered by studies of the contagion effect before dismissing calls not to name shooters as “moral preening.”
The press has long understood that there is a complicated balance to strike in reporting on matters such as suicide, national-security intelligence and the details of bomb-making. As the latest research and the spate of recent killings suggest, we urgently need to have the same sort of conversation about mass shootings.
—Mr. Schulman is the editor of the New Atlantis: A Journal of Technology and Society.
Appeared in the November 18, 2017, print edition
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