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KOPEL: Reducing the risk of copycat killers

How papers can avoid glorifying perpetrators

By Dave Kopel, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published December 15, 2007 at 12:05 a.m.

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The way the media cover an event influences whether there will be repetitions. For example, if a fan runs onto the field during a baseball game, the broadcast cameras usually avoid showing pictures of the fan. The TV producers know that the fan on the field is seeking attention, and that, presumably, getting his picture on television will reward him. Moreover, broadcasting the man's antics would encourage copycats.

Killing time at a baseball game is a tiny misdeed, compared to killing people, but many media decisions have the effect of encouraging copycat murders.

Last April, The Denver Post published on its front page five "glamour shots" that the Virginia Tech murderer had taken of himself, and sent to NBC. On Wednesday, the Post ran a front-page picture of the young man who killed two at a youth missionary center in Arvada and two others at a church in Colorado Springs, along with very large-type excerpts from the killer's rantings. In the first sentence, the killer compared himself to the Virginia Tech killer.

The Post might has well have a run a sidebar: "Are you a hate-filled sociopath? Are you upset because you have an intense feeling of superiority to other people, even though you have accomplished little or nothing? Your hateful screeds will not meet our standards for publication as a letter to the editor. However, if you perpetrate a mass murder, we will put your picture on our front page, publish your writings there, too, and do our part to ensure that your name is remembered forever."

The above paragraph is not the formal policy of the Post and of much of the mainstream media, but it amounts to the de facto policy.

In vivid contrast, the front page of Wednesday's Rocky Mountain News featured a photo of the students at Youth with A Mission in fervent group prayer, forgiving the killer. Both front pages will encourage imitation.

Loren Coleman's book The Copycat Effect convincingly proves that sensational media coverage of murders and suicides leads to additional murders and suicides. Coleman's weblog, copycateffect.blogspot.com, suggests that the Colorado attacks may have been triggered by media coverage of a similar attack on an Omaha, Neb., shopping mall a few days before.

This week, KHOW radio talk-show hosts Dan Caplis and Craig Silverman led an excellent discussion of media responsibility in coverage of publicity-seeking murderers, including a good interview with Rocky publisher John Temple on Tuesday, in which Temple strongly defended media publication of a killer's name and picture.

Temple argued that newspapers should be edited with the ordinary reader in mind, and not with a view to a small number of sociopaths. But in fact, newspapers should sometimes be edited with the potential criminal in mind. For example, during the NATO meeting at the Broadmoor in 2003, the papers published some general facts about the security precautions. But if someone had leaked detailed security plans, which might have been useful to potential assassins, I strongly doubt that the papers would have published them - although the papers might have written about the leak while leaving out the details.

Even if one grants the arguments that publication of a publicity-minded killer's name and picture serve a public interest that trumps the risk of encouraging copycats, there are some standards that every responsible media outlet could adopt, to at least reduce the risk:

1. If a killer was seeking infamy, neither his picture nor his words should ever appear on the front page. The front page, because it seen at newsstands, convenience stores, and other locations, even by people who don't read the newspaper, has a publicity value that far exceeds any other part of the newspaper.

2. Temple argues that photos help readers understand that people who do terrible things are often very ordinary-looking. If so, a single photo on a single day is sufficient.

3. Never run a photo or video which the killer has chosen for his own publicity. Similarly, never run a photo of the killer "in action" - as in a surveillance tape. Such photos are enticing to sociopaths.

4. Do publish a photo showing the disgusting post-mortem condition of the killer, with half his face blown off after he has killed himself or been shot by a good citizen. The photo should appear, not in the printed paper, but on the newspaper's Web site and behind a warning page. Such photos would deglamourize the perpetrators.

5. Although there is some news value in reporting the killer's name initially, there is no need to use the name incessantly. Talk shows, TV programs, and follow-up news articles should follow the good example of Caplis and Silverman. Refer to the killer instead as "the coward," or some other term.

Correction: My previous column praised a recent column by David Sirota. The author was actually David Ignatius.

Dave Kopel is research director at the Independence Institute, an attorney and author of 10 books. He can be reached at .

Comments

  • December 15, 2007

    7:37 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    me2 writes:

    Good ideas here. Still won`t stop the mentally ill, but these moves would reduce the thrill level for some kids. Maybe long enough for them to get help, or just grow up a bit.

  • December 15, 2007

    8:58 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    rellimpank writes:

    --Dave hits it on the head--this article should be pasted to the eyeballs of certain print and TV news editors--

  • December 15, 2007

    11:20 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    db writes:

    I agree. I believe sheer infamy is a driving force with these
    sad, pathetic souls. Stop giving in to them, Media.

  • December 16, 2007

    7:20 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    jdwalz writes:

    Good ideas in principle with an exception. Ted Kaczynski (the Unabomber, whose name I Googled and spelled it wrong but Google corrected my spelling and pointed me to his Wikipedia page (!!) -- talk about infamy, but anyway..) Ted condemned himself with his own words when his "manifesto" was printed in the NYT and WaPo. I don't feel bad that the Unabomber got his infamy at the price of his freedom. Not a bad trade-off, so we shouldn't be willing to go so far as to ignore that publicity is what they seek and they bolder they get, the more the incriminate themselves.

  • December 16, 2007

    9:23 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    schizuki writes:

    The media do not print the names of juveniles accused of crimes. They do not print the names of rape victims. They do not print photos of rape victims, despite the fact that showing how "ordinary looking" they are would raise awareness of the universality of the crime.

    Given these precedents, perhaps Mr. Temple could explain why withholding the names and photos of these losers would be such a grave disservice to the readership. The answer, of course, it that it is not. But it certainly would be a grave disservice to the ratings-hungry sensationalist media, wouldn't it?

  • December 17, 2007

    1:24 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    Spencer writes:

    How can we stop all the copycats on political radio shows?

  • December 29, 2007

    6:46 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    gary writes:

    The RMN will reveal teenage murderers names...bacause it is news and thier responibility. But, oh no... we can not print the name of the attorney blowing a horn in people's ears at the Bronco games......Fair reporting...right???