Another school shooting in Maryland. Do you think if the media would stop sensationalizing these shootings, they wouldn’t happen as often?

Where, and who, draws the line between sensationalizing and reporting is my question? Would they happen if no one ever talked about it? Sure.

I agree @rojo, but would they happen as much? I don’t think so.

I, too, must question the line between “sensationalism” and simple, standard, basic reporting. And I believe they would still happen.

I started a thread about this not long ago. Worded differently.

I don’t know how to change it. But I do think that the media plays a role.

How do you sensationalise a school shooting? The bare facts are sensational enough and not reporting them is not the answer. I think we already know what the answer is.

More intelligent and sober (not to mention non- corporate propaganda ) reporting could do a lot for US culture, including mass shootings. The crazy-sensational-hype entertainment/reporting “style” features minimal humanity or sobriety, and intoxicates public thinking.

I don’t know what direct impact it would have on the frequency of these events, however. I imagine there would be many good effects though, especially over time, and that this would probably be one of them. Certainly the corporate news and its style makes me feel alienated, appalled by the march of corruption and controlled stupid discourse that embraces atrocious conventional misconceptions, and hostile towards our culture and its corporate masters, etc.

“Back in my day”... it was gang shootings. They became so common that they weren’t even truly newsworthy. They might get a mention in the newspaper, but unless it was a high body count or someone “innocent” was hurt, no one really noticed.

People still kept killing each other.

The media isn’t the intended target, or intended audience in most cases. They just want to hurt someone and want to make someone pay.

They have sorta a duty to report it, but should leave the shooters name and sex out of it, just it was done by a young teen sorta thing, and make it standard so any future shooter wont be getting their name all over the country for their 15 minutes of fame be it bad fame or not.

Not just media but need to rethink as a whole why they are happening. They’ll only stop if root causes are tackled properly. Otherwise things like media coverage or not won’t matter much.

Like curbing bullying, maybe install a sense of hope, a wage that people can actually live on?
That sorta root causes?
Or just stand in the corner and say these things wouldn’t happen if there wasn’t such an easy access to firearms?
Or that kind of root cause?

@SQUEEKY2 – I’d invite you to visit any school and ask about bullying. It’s unreal the lengths they go to right now to stop bullying. My Kindergartner goes to “anti-bullying” seminars at her elementary school and friends who teach high school have to treat someone making fun of someone else exactly like a physical fight.

Schools are way way out there trying to stop bullying.

GOOD!
Now let’s start with a living wage that doesn’t take both parents working 40+ hours a week just to put a roof over their heads.
Then let’s go with teaching the kids that life although may suck at times is very much worth it, and with a little energy you can accomplish great things.(see a sense of hope)

As @imrainmaker pointed out we need to find the root cause as to why these kids reach a point ,where they want to end others lives and their own as well.
We want to scream easy access to guns, or all the violence they view as entertainment.

I think it would be a very good idea not to plaster it all over the television.

I think it does have a snowball effect. I’m with you @chyna.

The sensationalism will melt away as the frequency increases, and these things become “routine”.

Or..it’s prompting ACTION. I, personally, refuse to read the names of the people who are shooting. I don’t want to have them memorized and I won’t put them in print.

I agree with your thoughts SQUEEKSTER. Don’t give the shooter one old nickle of time.

Blaming the media seems to me as misdirected as blaming video games and comic books.

Today’s incident was certainly not “sensationalized”. Barely heard about it here on the west coast, hardly covered on CNBC or MSNBC. One small alert that the (unnamed) “shooter was dead”.

Right @zen? It was barely a blip, and that’s really sad. But thankfully no one but the gunman was killed. He only had a hand gun.

Yeah, don’t think this was a copycat. I think this was someone who had a specific gripe with someone and used a gun against a former girlfriend and new beau.

I kinda wondered that too. But the guy was 14, and the girl was 16. The guy that shot them was 17. But it’s possible, I suppose.

@zenvelo I agree the MD shooting has not been sensationalized. Do you think it should have received more national TV coverage?

It was a blip with the Austin bomber. You got to kill 10+ for your name to be said.

Or it is guns.

^The news reported that guns actually made the explosives. I guess guns do kill people…

And so, if a school shooting occurs and it is not publicly reported with enough shocked attention, how many minutes will it be before some parent wants to sue the media because his or her child was killed and it wasn’t even worth mentioning on the news?

@Jeruba I can only answer for myself, I don’t mean we shouldn’t mention it at all. Interrupting programming for hours and talking about an incident nationally for days, even weeks, is different than a mention.

Maybe there will be some parents very upset their child’s school didn’t get TV coverage, I have no idea how parents who go through something like this would feel. Are upper middle class suburbs more likely to get a lot of coverage? It does seem that way to me. We should ask ourselves why is that. I don’t know where the other shootings happened this year.

The Parkland shooting was a high school, in a very blue county, and the children were old enough to speak out for themselves. Southern Maryland I’m assuming is a fairly red part of MD (assuming from having lived in MD, but I have not researched it) and they probably really like their guns there. Plus, they believe the MD shooting was specifically targeted, and just happened to occur on school grounds.

Is the national media not reporting in the same way when this happens in minority communities? Or, when it happens in gun culture communities? What about the kids who go through something like this and want school administrators and teachers to have guns? Are they getting a platform? An opportunity to be heard in the national media with equal time? Not on my TV station. Is that because those kids don’t exist? I have no idea. I have a lot of adult friends in favor of teachers being able to carry.

This story was not sensationalized because it goes directly against the anti-gun agenda.
“Blaming the media seems to me as misdirected as blaming video games and comic books”
Except that the media whips the public up into a frenzy in a way that comic books and video games do not. It often indirectly gives these shooters celebrity status in the minds of other would be shooters. The more it happens the better their ratings.
” He only had a hand gun.” It could have been as bad or worse than any of the others. Remember the virginia tech shooter used only handguns. It does look like there was a specific gripe though but it was stopped by….

It could also have been a lot worse if it was an AK47 instead of a handgun. It only takes a few seconds to hit a dozen people.

@ARE_you_kidding_me I already have friends writing on Facebook the MD was stopped by a gun. For some reason they feel an armed resource officer is the same as arming teachers. I have a feeling most Democrats are ok with a security or resource officer having a gun. When I went to school, I graduated in ‘85, there was an officer/security in my high school. I don’t remember if he was armed or not. I doubt any parents would have been bothered if he was.

The Democrats seem to have some hysterical people thinking teachers will be forced to have a gun. Who said that? The discussion is about teachers being allowed to have a gun.

I personally don’t like the idea of teachers having a gun, although I’m not 100% against it, but it would need to be a very specific circumstance. As far as a resource officer having one, I’m fine with that.

The celebrity status thong is exactly my issue. They put the Boston bomber guy on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine for fuck’s sake! That can’t help right?

^I missed that. That is just glorifying him.

I think a lot of these people are loners. They don’t have many friends, and may be ignored by their families. Getting some attention, even bad attention could be a lure.

I watched a very interesting show from NOVA on Netflix called “The Mind of a Rampage Killer.” You should check it out. They ARE loaners. And they do it so they can have the satisfaction of knowing their name is on the lips of everyone in the country.

^There you go.

I don’t think you can stop the stories from circulating and blossoming. That shooting in Florida went online right away, with kids posting goodbyes. You can’t stop those.
On the one hand, such things need to be reported. People who live elsewhere but know someone who was there will want full details.
On the other hand, those mourning losses want to be spared the agony of seeing reports going on and on.
Then too, some want to see their friends and heroes memorialized.
I think it is a case of we are stuck with it for better or worse.

Here is another thought to chew on a while. We hear about the ones who brag that they will kill more than this or that shooter. What we don’t hear about, is how many potential shooters see the media coverage and decide it is more than they are willing to face.

I’m not sure how I feel about the bully campaigns. I thought they were a positive thing, then one day when I told my daughter no, go to your room. She stood her ground and told me I can’t bully her. I followed that with a long discussion about the difference between bullying and discipline, but she remained adamant.
I think if kids are going to be educated about bullying, they should also be taught what it is not.

@Patty_Melt How old was your daughter when she defied you and called your actions bullying?

When my daughter was 13 and I was angry with her for her sheer defiance, she got in my face and said she was gonna call child protective services on me….........

I couldn’t help but notice that this article didn’t mention the shooter’s name. That’s another place to start. There will be NO fame for there ain’t no one for to give you no name.

@JLeslie, she was, I think, thirteen.

13 is such a lovely age for girls. >_<.

By the way, there were two shot by the boy, an ex, and a boy. The girl has died.

I usually say 14 is the bewitching age, but I guess some start earlier. Lol.

No, it’s 13, @JLeslie.

NOVA notwithstanding, I think it’s probably inaccurate to reduce the motivations of people who go on killing sprees to attention-seeking.

However, giving healthy positive attention to everyone would I think be the right approach, if it can be done well. I have seen some efforts which have been done pretty clumsily, though, which I think shows part of what the cultural problem is.

For example, a local school head set up a wall with pictures of all his students in it and had all his staff (not just teachers but support staff too) and have them put a mark by all the faces they thought they had a connection with. Then he took those with the fewest marks to be at risk, and told the staff to try to form connections with them.

I think that shows some insight and is probably positive overall, but there were also some aspects I thought were clumsy and stigmatizing. I think “loner” is already a label with inaccurate negative connotations and fears assigned by our extroversion-biased society, and we seem to already be going down the path of adding “potential mass-killing spree suspect” to the list.

I hope it did that privately.

@Dutchess_III If you mean the local school head’s wall of suspected lonely students and assigned janitors and teachers trying to make connections with them, well, there was a newspaper article about it in the local paper of a nearby town, so I imagine word may have got around to the kids.

Oh my God. Are they insane @Zaku? That is the exact WRONG way to handle it to publicly blare it out! Those kids KNOW who they are, and all the students KNOW who they are too!

I don’t know. I think they’re afraid and trying to do good, but I think their ideas seem weird and they seem very insensitive and not savvy at all.

There was also a local newspaper story about another school where a local kid got reported and investigated because another student heard them talking about shooting people, but I saw no indication that the kid was serious in any way. It’s been a long time since I was in grade school, but we boys were talking about all kinds of violence and nonsense throughout most of our free time during grade school. It feels to me like another huge clash of norms where there are some really severely clueless people (some of them in charge of schools) reacting to kids in really weird patronizing and way-over-suspicious ways.