Rewarding mass murderers?
This post was published 2 years 6 months 17 days ago and its content may not be valid anymore.Syl is going to get on my case nagging me with the "I told you" because the Washington Post published an article which confirms many peoples thoughts concerning the recent Virginia Tech killing spree.
Despite all the searching-for-an-answer hand-wringing we have been subjected to this last week, the most obvious ounce of prevention would be to stop allowing the likes of Cho to play the media like a piano. As it is, we gave him everything he would have wished for. In so doing, journalists who claim only to be helping us to “understand,” the better to prevent future rampages, are hypocritical. Ask any Skinnerian psychologist: Reward behavior, and it rises.
As a novelist, I covet that “understanding.” As a citizen, I resist it. Pity for Cho’s purportedly tormented childhood and fascination with his psychotic, solipsistic universe only entice other disturbed characters to make a bid for the same sympathy.
What are your thoughts concerning the way mass media handled the ordeal, or any violent incident in the past? Furthermore, does coverage of such events motivate more violence?
The purpose of “mass media” is to keep the public afraid and worried about how “bad it is out there” in the world – it’s how one controls a population.
They do a GREAT job!
You are exactly right Dan…….the media gets the watching public in an emotional frenzy over these type of situations all the time. What happened to just being able to let those that need to grieve do so, and everyone else feels sympathy for those involved? All of the different media outlets go at it tooth and nail trying to one up the competitors with some “breaking developments” in this or that. It’s like watching CSI, but with worse acting. As far as media showboating or whatever you call it goes…….I’ve had a lifelong passion for all things involving motorsports, primarily stock-cars, but when I turned on the TV to watch the Saturday night NASCAR race, I was appalled to see VT logos everywhere. The way I felt about that is this: Does anyone that lost a relative or friend in the VT shootings really care if a racecar is emblazoned with VT logos? Or if every driver has a VT patch on their suit? Probably not, which furthers what Dan said in that the media beats this stuff into the ground almost as if to keep us scared of the “the big bad world”.