A mass murderer's popularity incites copycat behavior - don't name him, don't show his photo, experts advise the media
The mass casualty shooting at Charles University's Faculty of Arts has shaken the entire Czech Republic, including the media. Publishing photographs of the victims hiding from the murderer at a time when it was not yet certain whether the perpetrator might have an accomplice, or journalists publishing lists of missing persons before their relatives could be contacted have not been the only missteps here.
American detectives and media experts have long warned against publishing the name and photograph of such a perpetrator. According to their research, doing so incites others to imitate their crimes.
In 2017, a study was published in the USA on the consequences of the media coverage of the crimes committed by mass casualty shooters. Co-author Adam Lankford, a professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Alabama, subsequently called on journalists not to publish the names and photographs of mass murderers in such cases.
“It is important to report the details of the attacker’s behavior because those details can be important for understanding warning signs. […] Our proposal is for [the] media to keep reporting all the details about these crimes and these criminals that they would report anyway, but to make two small changes: Stop publishing the name of the perpetrator and stop publishing the photos or likenesses with the face of the perpetrator,” Lankford said in an interview for the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government in Massachusetts, USA.
The exception, according to Lankford, would be cases where the murderer has yet to be apprehended and publishing the details could aid police with doing so.
Don’t feed the desire for fame
In his research, Lankford mapped many examples of perpetrators, both shooters and suicide bombers, who admitted that fame is what they want. In 1999, the Columbine High School shooters were influenced by the amount of attention that the 1995 Oklahoma City bomber received, he has written.
“More recently, the Orlando nightclub shooter admitted that he was inspired by the [2013] Boston Marathon bombers. This was only possible due to the amount of media coverage the Boston bombers received,” Lankford said in the 2017 interview.
This article was first published in Czech for the Institute of Independent Journalism, an independent nonprofit organization and registered institution providing analysis, journalism and news reporting. The Institute’s analyses, articles and data outputs are equally available to all under set conditions.
“These perpetrators who desire fame are particularly dangerous because they kill and wound more victims than other active shooters, they are frequently competing for attention by doing their best to maximize the death rate of their victims, they can inspire others and the copycat effect happens. However, if the media transform the way they report on mass shootings, it could be possible to deny perpetrators the attention they seek and deter future perpetrators from attacking,” Lankford has written.
In 2017, 149 American academics signed a letter to the media calling on them not to publish the names and photographs of mass murderers and to thereby not instigate the copycat effect. Two years before that, another campaign called on the media to do the same, called No Notoriety.
Family members of the victims of one of the most deadly mass shootings in US history, the Aurora, Colorado movie theater massacre, launched that particular effort. Dave Cullen, a well-known American journalist who spent 10 years reporting on the Columbine school massacre, also called on the media not to publish the names of such attackers.
Cullen recommended the media be sparing with the name of a suspect during the first 48 hours after such an incident and thereafter to refer to the suspect as the “murderer”, “perpetrator” or “shooter”. He also compiled some advice for journalists on how to report on such incidents.
Less is more
Cullen has worked as a reporter for The New York Times, Newsweek, The Times of London, The Washington Post, Slate, Salon, The Daily Beast and The Guardian. In 2009 he published the bestseller Columbine, a portrait of the two murderers and their victims, with the Hachette Book Group.
The shooting at the Columbine school in 1999 is considered the first incident of its kind in America and inspired dozens of similar mass shootings. The word “Columbine” has become a synonym for school shootings in America and the copycat effect is also called the “Columbine effect“.
The Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin expressed its appreciation in its research for the fact that many American media outlets have adjusted the way they report on these events in recent years, based on expert experience and recommendations. On the basis of research into the impact of the media coverage of incidents of mass casualty shooting, recommendations for the media on how to report on such events have been published by SAVE (Suicide Awareness Voices of Education), which is an American organization focused on preventing suicide, in collaboration with Columbia University and with international experts from the field of the media and mental health.
Main Recommendations:
- Report about the victims and about how the local community and the nation can mobilize to support the victims and prevent future shootings.
- Never forget that the families, including the family of the perpetrator, are deeply affected and traumatized by such an incident. Be sensitive when interviewing them.
- Avoid formulations that might increase misunderstanding of and prejudices against mental illness and include information about prevention and treatment in the reporting. A diagnosis of mental illness need not necessarily have a causal connection to committing violence.
- Do not sensationalize or simplify, because that can motivate people to seek fame. (For example, don’t use phrases such as “The most dangerous incident since the Columbine case.“)
- Do avoid stigmatizing members of the community where the incident occurred and the people targeted by the perpetrator.
- Minimize the amount of reporting about perpetrators, because others may identify with them or be inspired by them.
- Be sparing in your use of the perpetrator’s photograph, especially in follow-up reporting, with the exception of cases when the police are still looking for a perpetrator or for more victims.
- Never publish a photograph of a perpetrator together with photographs of victims.
