The media must learn from the tragedy of Newtown

### Sam Carter

**On Friday, 14 December 2012, twenty schoolchildren and six adults were killed by lone gunman Adam Lanza at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Sadly, it is nothing new; since 1982, 61 mass murders involving guns have taken place in the USA. In each case, a media furore has followed, often identifying the culprit’s access to firearms as the primary talking point. **

And yet in the wake of the events in Newtown, to focus our efforts on gun laws alone misses the point. Rather, a look at the way the American media (and British and news outlets around the world) have reported it reveals the flawed and potentially destructive way this tragedy and ones like it are discussed.

Indeed, the portrayal of school shooters as anti-heroes has become a tradition of sorts among news organisations. Photographs of Lanza were a common sight in the days following the shooting, fostering a public image that continues to be supplemented by the analysis of the minutiae of his life and background. His newfound status as a cultural icon echoes that of other unstable killers; when Mark David Chapman shot John Lennon in 1980, he notoriously clung to a copy of _Catcher in the Rye_ and cited it as his inspiration. Behaviour change expert Joseph Grenny cites the comparable story of a fourteen-year-old boy who opened fire on his teacher and classmates in 1996.

As in the case of Chapman, what resonated in the media’s interpretations of the event was not his mental state or the devastation his actions wrought on the local community, but his apparent obsession with a piece of literature in the form of Stephen King’s _Rage_. Meanwhile, detailed descriptions of the teenager’s attire and weaponry were tantamount to how-to guides on carrying out similar crimes. What resulted was an onslaught of school shootings over the next few weeks that mimicked the King-quoting teenager in their approaches, evidently spurred on by his sudden infamy.

And while Adam Lanza, Dylan Klebold, Eric Harris and the like are now widely recognised, the same cannot be said of their victims. Save for a fleeting sound bite or slideshow reel, recognition of those affected by the shooting is too often neglected in favour of the person that killed them. In many cases, they become a mere body count used to compare the event to others in the most clinical of ways. Similarly, qualifying such an incident as “worse” than others only serves to act as a challenge for another potential killer to propel themselves into a state of unparalleled notoriety for their heinous crimes. It is a twisted benchmark that, tragically, has been surpassed time and time again.

Contemporary news sources must move away from attempting to quantify suffering in this way and instead provide support for the families torn apart by it. Following a 2009 school shooting in Germany, forensic psychiatrist Dr Park Dietz implored the media to “localise this story to the affected community and as boring as possible in every other market” so as to avoid the transformation of mass shooters into household names. This statement carries particular weight in the wake of Newtown residents’ recent pleas for an unrelenting media presence to afford them space to recover.

The ultimate question that endures after the events of Newtown is _“why?”_ Guns are, of course, part of the problem; that firearms remain readily accessible for disturbed individuals such as Lanza is at the heart of a fierce debate linked inextricably to the United States Constitution. But without meaningful discussion of mental illness and the motivations behind mass murder, we can only hope to be persistently dumbfounded by its recurrence.

#### The Newtown Victims:

**Pupils at Sandy Hook who were killed:**
Charlotte Bacon, age 6
Daniel Barden, age 7
Olivia Engel, age 6
Josephine Gay, age 7
Ana M Marquez-Greene, age 6
Dylan Hockley, age 6
Madeleine F Hsu, age 6
Catherine V Hubbard, age 6
Chase Kowalski , age 7
Jesse Lewis, age 6
James Mattioli, age 6
Grace McDonnell, age 7
Emilie Parker, age 6
Jack Pinto, age 6
Noah Pozner, age 6
Caroline Previdi, age 6
Jessica Rekos, age 6
Avielle Richman, age 6
Benjamin Wheeler, age 6
Allison N Wyatt, age 6

**Teaching staff at Sandy Hook who were killed:**
Rachel Davino, age 29
Dawn Hochsprung, age 47
Anne Marie Murphy, age 52
Lauren Rousseau, age 30
Mary Sherlach, age 56
Victoria Soto, age 27