Or at least make them a lot less prevalent. Journalists and news reporters used to know how to do this without needing to be taught back in ye olde days when you also didn’t have to explain why scratching yourself in public was considered crass. However, those days seem to be gone so here it is for your consideration. I would like to present the new and improved “Some Asshole” method of tragic news coverage.
Reporting on what happened is fine and while Some Asshole is at large, giving out a description of what he looks like (and, by and large, mass shooters are male) is fine. However, once he’s been arrested, the story needs to switch from being about him to being about the victims and the way the community is handling it. Speculations on his motives, things that might have influenced him, or attempts to point the finger at anything other than him being a certified member of the Giant Tribe of Big Giant Douchnozzle Assholes is out of bounds.
Plain and simple, Some Assholes are out for glory. The more glory they get in the form of media attention, focus, news stories, people speculation on “root causes,” arguments and debates over which particular psychoses they suffer from, politicians and talking heads weighing in on What Needs To Be Done, the happier they are. And, when the news cycle continues and the next member of the Giant Tribe of Big Giant Douchnozzle Assholes decides he wants to go out with a bang, he knows that the news media is going to help him achieve that goal.
Anonymizing the shooters, focusing on the victims, and telling a story of how the community is working to rebuild and move on instead of doing what we do now — glamorizing the killers, anonymizing the victims, widening the divisions, and blaming everyone and everything but the killer — will make it a lot let interesting for members of the Asshole Tribe to go out like that. They won’t be able to make their statement that way so they’ll have to find some other method — hopefully something a bit more constructive.
— G.K.
I like this idea a lot, but I’ve seen it twice before.
First (and possibly the original) was in “Soft Targets” by Dean Ing — a book that predicted terrorism in the US in 1971, before even the Beirut bombing had taken place. Ing wanted newscasters to call the bad guys “charlies,” make fun of them and make them look like idiots.
The second was in one of the trilogy that Bear, Bova, and Brin added to Asimov’s Foundation series. Whichever it was, he had the emperor order that newscasters call the bad guys “Moron 1”, “Moron 2”, etc. (the number going up for each new bad guy).
What both of these had in common, that you don’t (or at least don’t expressly say), is that they didn’t just refuse publicity to the bad guy’s name, but also to everything about him — including any “nom de guerre” of him or his gang, his ideology, and whatever orders or demands he wanted people to hear. So for instance if the group claims to be acting on behalf of oppressed Palestinians, or Irish, or any other people — the public doesn’t hear it. And when he tells you and me to follow his demands or else, we don’t hear it either.
The ultimate point being that that publicity which might generate fear (and maybe some sympathy too) is the biggest reward terrorists want for their crimes. So let’s not give it to them.
I enjoyed this post – just thought I’d drop a link to the comic, as I’m a reader and you wrote that you couldn’t find it 🙂
http://nonadventures.com/2015/06/20/the-some-of-all-fears/
Thanks! It’s nice to *finally* be able to give proper attribution.
— G.K.
You’re welcome!