An open letter to all editors and news producers across this country:
Last week marked the one-year anniversary of the tragic shootings at the Virginia Tech campus.
Earlier this week, the ninth anniversary of the Columbine High School shooting was commemorated.
Both shootings and all those that have occurred before, between or after, leave us on a quest for answers.
Do we need to stop bullying? Do we need to get our kids off anti-depressant drugs? Do we need to install metal detectors in our schools?
And every time we dig through these shootings, trying to make sense of it, find some reasoning, some inkling that could have helped prevent it.
And, besides the shooter himself, the main culprit in all of shootings is never taken to task.
Every school shooting happening today is a product of the national media attention focused on these tragedies. First, we need the name of the suspect, then we need his picture, then we need his myspace page and if he made any disturbing home movies, alluding to the fact that he planned to do this, we better get those up on the nightly news too.
If there is any resistance to law enforcement agencies releasing these types of materials, we shake our finger in disgust, dust off a Freedom of Information request and demand the information be released.
And the clincher comes when we say, “The public needs to know about this so we can learn from it and prevent it from happening again.”
Balderdash.
The media is trying to make a buck, trying to boost ratings and trying to sell papers. I’ve always resisted that characterization of the media by others because I deeply love this profession but sometimes if the shoe fits …
Instead, we grant instant, immortal celebrity to these sick, sick individuals. Not only will they have their picture on TV for an interminable amount of time, long after the names of victims have faded but, each time a new school shooting occurs, we get to revisit what they did as if this is some ongoing competition.
Shame on us. Shame on all of us.
The only way to stop today’s school shootings will require a revolutionary change in the way we report the news. It means all news agencies, large and small, sitting down and deciding the names of individuals who commit these violent crimes will not be published for any reason nor will their manifestos of hate.
It will be difficult and it will leave the thirst of our need-to-know society unquenched. And the impact will not be immediate. We will need to grit our teeth more than a few times, holding that name of that individual in our hand, just wishing we could put it out there for everybody to see.
Editors and producers will scratch their heads wondering how they fill that empty space or time where they would normally speculate on what drove this individual to such a lowly state. How about spend a few extra minutes talking about the precious young lives taken by such cowards. I promise no one will mind.
The media loves to pat itself on the back when we do something right – just look at the glimmer on our faces when our reporting helped free an innocent man from jail (Does Tim Masters ring a bell?) or get an important law passed or changed.
The media gets a bad rap, sometimes rightfully. Often our need to know can make bad situations worse.
It would be a remarkable feat if we could look back 10 to 20 years from now and say, “Remember all those school shootings? Well, we stopped those.”
If the numbers can be believed, newspapers are on their way out and there are so many television new outlets out there, everyone has tuned out. I say ratings and circulation numbers be damned.
Let’s try saving some lives.
