“Every time we have intense saturation coverage of a mass murder, we expect to see one or two more within a week.”
– Dr. Park Dietz, forensic psychiatrist
The U.S. has experienced a massive increase in the number of mass shootings the last 30 years, with a mass shooting defined as four or more people shot in one event.
Last Thursday saw the passage of the 274th day of the year along with the country’s 294th mass shooting when a 26-year-old man opened fire at Umpqua Community College in Oregon in a rampage that resulted in 10 deaths, to include that of the shooter, and 9 injured.
Nearly every time one of these shootings appears, the internet – Reddit in particular – gets swamped with a 2009 installment of “Newswipe with Charlie Booker” showing how the 24-hour news-cycle is part of the system that gives rise to mass shootings. The aim of Newswipe was to expose the inner workings of news media and that particular segment dealt with the damaging sensationalist reporting of the Winnenden school shooting.1
The segment discussed the work of Dr. Park Dietz, “one of America’s most prominent and accomplished forensic psychiatrists.” As Biography reports, Dietz has consulted or testified in many of the highest profile US criminal cases including those of “John Hinckley Jr., Jeffrey Dahmer, Susan Smith, Polly Klaas, Joel Rifkin, the Menendez brothers (retrial), the O.J. Simpson civil suit, John DuPont, Andrea Yates, the Unabomber, the shootings at the U.S. Capitol and Columbine and more.”
Dietz warned in a 2014 interview that: “The longer we continue the coverage, the more colorful, emotionally-arousing and biographical about the shooter that coverage is, the more imitators we’ll attract,” adding that such news coverage could affect “a segment of the audience that is at risk of doing this.”
And that segment of the audience is people that are depressed and suicidal, people who are angry and blaming others for their problems – perhaps because they are paranoid – and people who are armed or know how to get armed.
As Seattle’s KUOW reported: “
Dietz, who is a founder of the Threat Assessment Group, said he has urged the media to reconsider their coverage style since 1993.
“I have been on CNN at least three times saying, ‘If you keep this up, we’re going to have another one within two weeks’ – and I’ve been right all three times,” he said.
In the Newswipe clip, below, Dietz outlines the guidelines for news reporting of mass shootings, assuming the goal is to prevent future events.
Dr. Dietz explains that if you don’t want to propagate more mass killings:
- Don’t start the coverage with sirens blaring.
- Don’t air photographs of the killer.
- Don’t make this 24/7 coverage.
- Don’t make the body count the lead story.
- Don’t make the killer some kind of anti-hero.
- Localize this story to the affected community and make it as boring as possible in every other market.
Below is a 2013 interview in which Dietz discussed the effect that the mass media has in glorifying crimes and inspiring copy-cat actions that harm society.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EjwYc6CwY0
FOOTNOTES:
1: “The Winnenden school shooting occurred on the morning of 11 March 2009 at a secondary school in Winnenden, Baden-Württemberg, in southwestern Germany, followed by a shootout at a car dealership in nearby Wendlingen. The shooting spree resulted in 16 deaths, including the suicide of the perpetrator, 17-year-old Tim Kretschmer, who had graduated from the school one year earlier. He also injured nine people during the incident.” source
2. The interviews was conducted by KUOW’s Marcie Sillman on The Record the day after a shooting at Seattle Pacific University left one person dead and three others wounded.
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