I live in California, where there have been three mass shootings in the last week. Altogether, 19 people are dead, and several others are wounded.
Across America, there have been 40 mass shootings in the first month of 2023 alone.
As horrific as this is, I’m getting a little tired of watching the incessant and often absurd media coverage of these heartbreaking events. It’s one thing to tell us what happened — that’s important; that’s news. But when I turn on national cable news and see a non-stop stream of repeated coverage on every station — coverage that forces viewers to relive these events over and over, for several days after every event — even when there is no new information to share — it’s infuriating.
I understand the old newspaper adage: if it bleeds, it leads. After all, news outlets have to make money and everybody knows horror stories hold our attention.
But what if media attention is perpetrating the violence?
“California has some of the strictest gun laws in the country, but yet, look at what we just had today,” Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said during a news conference Sunday evening. “Let’s look across our nation, see what works and what doesn’t. I can tell you this: The status quo is not working.”
What we know about mass shooters
In every incidence of mass shootings, we find a similar pattern. While the victims are all different, the perpetrators are remarkably similar. They are almost always disgruntled, poorly socialized, angry males. Often they suffer from depression or some other mental illness.
A recent comprehensive study of mass shootings in America since 1966 shows there are four characteristics mass shooters tend to have in common:
1) Childhood trauma
2) A crisis or specific grievance
3) A “script” or another form of example that validates their feelings and provides a roadmap for their actions
4) Access to a firearm
Ideally, childhood trauma would be addressed and resolved via therapy, as would a particular crisis or a specific grievance. However, that is largely wishful thinking, and by the time it’s clear that a crisis or specific grievance has occurred, it’s usually after the shooting.
In California, we’ve done our best to address firearm access, but it’s not enough.
So, what can we do?
The answer may be in the third item on this list: A “script” or another form of example that validates their feelings and provides a roadmap for their actions.
The question we need to ask ourselves is where they’re getting these examples that validate their feelings and provide this so-called road map.
According to the above-referenced study, we need look no further than the Columbine High School massacre.
“There had been many mass shootings and even school shootings before, but Columbine, which took place in 1999 at a public high school in Littleton, Colorado, redefined the school shooting as a media spectacle. The chaotic scene outside the school was broadcast live for several hours before the perpetrators were found to have died by suicide, the shooters left an extensive record of their plans and motives.” (emphasis, mine)
Between mainstream media and social media, any potential mass shooter can easily find validation for his grievances and roadmaps for how to commit mass murder. All he needs to make the potential a reality is a really bad day and access to a firearm.
Media coverage of mass shootings needs to change
According to Jillian Peterson, one of the two authors of the study (which was funded by the Department of Justice) and co-author of a recent book titled The Violence Project: How to Stop a Mass Shooting Epidemic, “…when one really big one happens and gets a lot of media attention, we tend to see others follow.”
During an interview with Politico, Peterson was asked specifically if there was a link between the shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde. Here’s what she said:
“We don’t know for sure at this point, but our research would say that it’s likely. You had an 18-year-old commit a horrific mass shooting. His name is everywhere and we all spend days talking about “replacement theory.” That shooter was able to get our attention. So, if you have another 18-year-old who is on the edge and watching everything, that could be enough to embolden him to follow. We have seen this happen before.”
So, this begs the question: How much of the motivation for mass shootings is the desire for attention?
“The percentage of shooters driven by a desire for fame has risen substantially in the last five years… In the first 15 years of the 21st century, some 3% of perpetrators were motivated by the desire to go down in history as a mass shooter. Between 2015 and 2019, that number jumped to 12%.”
Given these statistics, theoretically, we could reduce mass shootings by up to 12% if we removed the media attention currently awarded to mass shooters now.
What the experts recommend
The study’s authors, Jillian Peterson and James Densley, both professors of criminology, focus their recommendations almost exclusively on the mental health aspects of mass shooters and the importance of encouraging the government to utilize data and mental health records to address these issues. It is their belief that if we document and follow at-risk individuals, we can find and stop them before they shoot.
While I applaud their work, I worry that government programs to address this issue will be too slow and costly to be effective any time soon. At best, it’s an expensive and potentially controversial long-term solution. Who will do the monitoring? What kind of privacy issues will this bring up? Will parents resist interference from the government and refuse to cooperate if their child is at-risk?
If we want to do something in the meantime, we should encourage the media to stop canceling regular programming for extended periods of time while covering each mass shooting in excruciating detail. The only people who need those details are those personally affected. When 11 people are killed, and the entire news-watching population of the country is subjected to every gruesome detail for days on end, the media is failing their viewing public.
As it stands, they are providing potential mass shooters with examples they can copy, and bombarding the rest of us with constant coverage of traumatic events, which exposes all of us to unnecessary trauma.
At a minimum, we must ask the media to stop advertising the methods and identities of the people who commit these heinous crimes. Surely, that’s not too much to ask.
Amen