I might have already posted about this before… I know Parker has said something similar.
I think the media should agree on a no-name policy whenever there is a school or mall shooting (or something of the same nature). The identity of the shooter should be kept completely secret from everyone who doesn’t need to know. There is a certain kind of fame attached to the people who go on these rampages. The guy who killed eight people in a mall the other day said in a note of apology, “at least I’ll be famous.”
I think the media should start sending the message, “if you do this kind of thing you will not be famous - your name will not be mentioned in any paper or on any news station. In fact, we will provide as little coverage as possible about what happened.”
Maybe there would be more downsides to such an approach than I realize, and you certainly can’t mandate this kind of thing - that would be a pretty big infringement on freedom of speech. Perhaps there could be some kind of universal agreement among all media producers.
I don’t know… I just think that if there weren’t any coverage, fewer people would shoot up schools or malls for the attention of it.
