Unnaturally Made Killers
posted by Frank Pasquale
After a week of media coverage of the Virginia Tech tragedy, we can compare how different outlets have shaped our view of events there. Megan McCardle notes:
I haven’t found a single editorial addressing one factor we know creates these mass murders: reporting on the mass murders. In the next few weeks and months, even over the next few years, expect to see copycat killings inspired by Cho’s actions. The more saturated the media coverage, the more such events we are likely to get.
Of course, it’s impossible to fully assess causation here, an issue that has vexed media reformers for decades. But Thomas de Zengotita has weighed in on how deeply mediated this killer’s self-conception was, and how the whole event quickly became polarized between different “scripts,” or ways of making sense of a terrible reality. Many criticize the media for airing so much of the shooter’s “media kit,” for complicity in fulfilling (if posthumously) a disturbed soul’s demand for the world’s attention.
Some respond that competitive pressures made the decision by NBC to share the materials inevitable. The Canadian Broadcasting Company decided not to air the Cho videos….but they are under less ratings pressure than American broadcasters, and at the time it aired the tapes, NBC was losing share to ABC.
Is there a role for law to deter an arms race of sensationalism? Fred Yen has mentioned a possible copyright issue here, but it’s hard to imagine the shooter’s family being capable of putting such a suit at the top of its concerns….especially immediately in the aftermath of the murders.
Could a ban on broadcast of such materials work? Perhaps, but I imagine would-be celebrity killers would simply upload their rants into the BitTorrent and YouTube ether. Blogs would quickly jump on disseminating it, eager for the fame & links that it could bring.
So despite my occasional dirigisme, I can’t see a role for law here. The public’s insatiable appetite for sensationalism, and predictably ensuing frenzies for renown, appear to be a durable aspect of a decentralized and link-driven web. Technology + Competition > Values.
April 23, 2007 at 2:37 pm
Posted in: First Amendment, Intellectual Property
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Responses (8)
Bruce Boyden - April 23, 2007 at 4:02 pm
I know they occur in movies, but is there any evidence “copycat killings” actually exist? I don’t mean homicides that mimic aspects of other homicides, I mean homicides that *would not have occurred at all* but for earlier homicides. If it’s an actual phenomenon, it should be possible to prove an up-tick in violence after widely reported murders — I’m thinking of more than anecdotal evidence here.
If they don’t actually occur, the rest of the policy concerns in this post are somewhat moot.
arthur - April 23, 2007 at 4:19 pm
Teh shooter’s family won’t make copyright a priority, but a victim’s family might. If Cho held a copyright at his death, then his estate holds the copyright now. His victims (or their estates) have excellent tort claims against the estate. A victim’s family member could secure a judgment against the Cho estate and then assert ownership of the copyright, either to profit or to suppress further publication.
Frank - April 23, 2007 at 5:13 pm
As for Bruce’s query: some evidence might be:
1) In this case, Cho did refer to the “martyrs Eric and Dylan” (from Columbine).
2) the CBC guy in the clip above said that he was worried about this possibility.
3) JUst as a matter of logic, someone who is suicidal and wants a ton of coverage for their ideas might reasonably presume they will get that coverage if they kill a lot of people.
As for 3, I will admit that I may be employing more logic there than a madman probably is capable of. And the public sphere is littered with arguments employing, “Too Much Logic, Too Little Evidence,” to quote the title of a Richard Rothstein article in Dissent on Sweatshops.
As for Arthur’s point: Quite a chilling example of the unintended consequences of information propertization.
Eric - April 23, 2007 at 5:20 pm
Some of the reporting I saw did mention that the killers in such incidents seem to be influenced by coverage of earlier ones. Setting aside the question of whether this claim is actually true, what struck me was the total disconnect between the acknowledgment of this possible fact, and the non-stop no-detail-too-trivial reporting.
Frank - April 23, 2007 at 7:00 pm
here’s a quote from a WaPo article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/20/AR2007042002004.html
“When researching a depressingly copious array of real-life campus massacres for a fictional variation on those macabre melees in my last novel, “We Need to Talk About Kevin,” I grew to appreciate that every school shooter has his own sorry story. Yet the one motivation that seems to tie all these misguided characters together is a yearning for media recognition.”
Justin T. - April 23, 2007 at 7:06 pm
It’s clear from the reporting that Cho’s internal troubles were perceptible to many others. Nevertheless, no concrete action was taken, from his childhood to his adulthood, by any agency that had the power to make a difference. While he of course was responsible for his deeds, one must suppose that early intervention would have staved off so violent a conclusion to his life. The whole reminds me of the most recent book by Andrew Vachss, whose observational skills often make his writing seem prescient:
Producers spun their Rolodexes, and the lucky winners got to be on television, “analyzing” what happened. None of them went near the truth. I knew that truth. The kid was a member of a bigger tribe than you could ever find on a reservation. My tribe. The Children of the Secret. We know.
The experts droned on about “communication” and “reaching out” and “peer rejection.” But this kid hadn’t flown under the radar. Everyone around him knew he was buried in despair. They probably figured they knew the outcome, too—the suicide rate on reservations is right up there with the alcoholism level.
That kid was just another of the invisible ones—bullied, beaten, and belittled every day of his marginalized life. If anyone had the slightest idea that he might be a danger to someone other than himself, they would have unleashed a snowstorm of “services.” Suicide, well, kids do that kind of thing. Homicide—now, that’s serious.
Every high school in America has them, the invisible ones. They all silent-scream the same warning: If you won’t see us, you’ll never see us coming.
But nobody ever starts the analysis until after the autopsy.
–Andrew Vachss, Mask Market, p. 103, 2006
Bruce Boyden - April 23, 2007 at 10:28 pm
Right, so there’s anecdotes, and some people worry about this. And no doubt some killers want attention. But they may settle for whatever attention they can get. The question is, are there a statistically significant number of people who are pushed over the edge, from non-crime-committing to crime-committing (or additional crime-committing), because of an increase in media coverage of past events? I.e., if there’s coverage amount X and number of rampage murders Y, does X+1 get you any additional Y? I’m guessing someone’s done this study already.
ray - April 24, 2007 at 6:07 am
The FBI suppressed most of the Columbine killers’ self-recorded tapes just because their psychological profilers opined that they would create imitators. It’s the same principle that Al-Queda and Hamas use to inspire future terrorists with suicide bombers’martyrdom tapes. So, yes, common sense is right, the American media have (incrementally) increased the danger for the American public (most especially students) by promoting Cho’s taped martyr’s diatribe. It is truly ironic that the American justice system itself promotes criminality: stateless terrorists are protected by the Geneva Conventions (originally designed to protect nation-states and their armed forces); the young cannot be prosecuted or punished for murder (and gangs have adapted their murderous “troops” composition in response to protect older members); likewise the retarded (too “stupid” to be morally accountable); and likewise criminally “insane” victimizers (who often are wealthy or well-connected, and who rely on sympathy and on high-priced psychiatric witnesses to convince judges and juries of their constitutional infirmity against “cruel and unusual punishment”, despite the true cruelty of their often torturous murders). Incidentally, I do not believe in the death penalty, but equally, I do not believe that those who intentionally take human life should ever be able to live their lives in liberty (perhaps even with a propensity to repeat their crimes in the future).
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