Stop Showing Photos and Names of Shooting Suspects

In 1966 a man entered the Rose-Mar College of Beauty where he killed 5 people including a toddler and injured 2 more. The suspect surrendered to police without incident and admitted to them that he was inspired by the University of Texas Tower shooter and a mass murderer who killed eight student nurses in their South Deering, Chicago residence via stabbing, strangling, slashing their throats, or a combination of the three, both earlier in the same year. The suspect indicated that he had wanted to kill more people than the perpetrator of the University of Texas tower shooter.

This event is considered to be the first “copy cat” mass murder in modern history and underscores a very critical observation of the media. Since mass shootings are pretty rare across the US, although the media would have you believe otherwise, they jump all over the story. They can’t wait to paste the picture and say the name of the shooter in a desperate race for ratings. If it bleeds it leads as they say in the industry. However, how many other would be copy cat killers are the media also inspiring? They see the shooters picture and name blasted on every channel of TV, Radio and news website. They want to live or die in infamy. They want to feel like they accomplished something of notoriety.

We should all call upon media to stop sharing the names and photos of these mass killers. Doing so may reduce the desire of future killers to try to out kill the last one so they can gain their 24-48 hours of news fame.