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Flaming Libs/Koranimals
Americas Foremost Criminal Profiler Warns Media Coverage Causes School Shootings
December 20, 2012
By Daniel Greenfield
Lets start with a basic article from Psychology Today.
School shootings are a contagion. And the media are consistent accomplices in most every one of them.
Theres really no useful debate on the point. The consensus of social scientists since David Phillips groundbreaking work in 1974 is that highly publicized stories of deviant and dangerous behavior influences copycat incidents. Phillips and scores of subsequent studies showed, for example, that suicide rates spike in the week after an inappropriately publicized celebrity suicide. Contrast this trend with no increase in suicides in the week following a media strike that unintentionally suppresses such coverage.
The same is true of school massacres. On Groundhog Day, Feb 2, 1996 a 14-year-old boy walked into his Moses Lake, Washington, Junior High School algebra class and started shooting. He killed his teacher, two classmates and severely wounded another student. Subsequent media coverage obsessed over the color of his clothes, his insidious planning and the inventory of his arsenal. In addition, they practically offered a how-to guide for concealing and deploying weapons in a coat. But what got the most attention was the fact that after shooting his teacher, he delivered a line from the Stephen King novel Rage with charismatic panache. Suddenly, the invisible adolescent was a cultural icon. Within a week, another shooting occurred that clearly echoed that of Feb 2. Then another on February 19. Another on March 11. Yet another on March 13. Along with other similarities, more than one of the apparent copycats also cited Kings novel as a creative resource.---
Americas Foremost Criminal Profiler Warns Media Coverage Causes School Shootings
December 20, 2012
By Daniel Greenfield
Lets start with a basic article from Psychology Today.
School shootings are a contagion. And the media are consistent accomplices in most every one of them.
Theres really no useful debate on the point. The consensus of social scientists since David Phillips groundbreaking work in 1974 is that highly publicized stories of deviant and dangerous behavior influences copycat incidents. Phillips and scores of subsequent studies showed, for example, that suicide rates spike in the week after an inappropriately publicized celebrity suicide. Contrast this trend with no increase in suicides in the week following a media strike that unintentionally suppresses such coverage.
The same is true of school massacres. On Groundhog Day, Feb 2, 1996 a 14-year-old boy walked into his Moses Lake, Washington, Junior High School algebra class and started shooting. He killed his teacher, two classmates and severely wounded another student. Subsequent media coverage obsessed over the color of his clothes, his insidious planning and the inventory of his arsenal. In addition, they practically offered a how-to guide for concealing and deploying weapons in a coat. But what got the most attention was the fact that after shooting his teacher, he delivered a line from the Stephen King novel Rage with charismatic panache. Suddenly, the invisible adolescent was a cultural icon. Within a week, another shooting occurred that clearly echoed that of Feb 2. Then another on February 19. Another on March 11. Yet another on March 13. Along with other similarities, more than one of the apparent copycats also cited Kings novel as a creative resource.---
Americas Foremost Criminal Profiler Warns Media Coverage Causes School Shootings