system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV: The media should stop reporting mass shootings

I think the way the news media currently treats mass shootings is unhelpful and causes more harm than good. Here's why.

The coverage doesn't do virtually any good. The only good thing I can think of that it ever caused is informing the friends and family of the victims. This way, they find out sooner than they would otherwise. But even this has a downside - scaring the hell out of everyone who knows anybody in the affected area.

But if we go by that logic and report a mass shooting with, say, 4 casualties, shouldn't we do the same if there's a large car accident or a small flood with the same number of victims? Statistically, yours friends and family are just as likely to be affected by either one.

On the other hand though, there seems to be real damage caused by this coverage. Individual shooters often want their name in the national spotlight. There's a real chance at least a few of them might not have even committed these acts if it weren't for the attention. And it's even worse with groups like ISIS which use these attacks as recruitment tools. In other words, reporting on a mass shooting, at least to a certain extent, seems to encourage the next one.

One thing that I expect to see in the comments is that not reporting mass shootings will normalize them. What I say to that is we just saw 2 mass shootings within 24 hours. And if you're like me, your reaction was probably something like reading the headline, saying "Ugh, again?" and moving on without even reading the article. Mass shootings already *are* normalized. Despite all our attention and all the articles and videos, they became normalized. Clearly more coverage isn't the way to stop that from happening.

Another thing I expect to see is that the media reports on what people care about. But I think those two go hand in hand - people shouldn't care as much and the media shouldn't talk about it as much. I know that might sound cold but there are tons of suffering in the world, mass shootings are just the tip of the tip of the iceberg. 

So how should mass shootings be reported? In my opinion, probably based on the number of casualties - the same way you'd report on car accidents or frequently occurring natural disasters (small scale floods for example). If a hundred people die, yes, that absolutely deserves national attention but if the number is 3, it shouldn't be breaking news nationwide. I do realize that this might actually incentivize attackers to try to kill more people and "make it" onto the news. It's definitely not a perfect way to do it and I'm completely open to ideas about how to do it better. But that's not what this post is about. I'm saying that the current system is broken, not that I know how exactly is should be fixed.
gpt
>Clearly more coverage isn't the way to stop that from happening.

Well yes but that's because we're not actually *doing* anything are we? But here's the thing: because of all the coverage we're aware that this is a problem and we **want** to do something. The more people we get onboard the closer we get to accomplishing something more than "thoughts and prayers".

I agree that copy cats are a problem but these shootings are well known globally, not just in the US, yet it's **just** the US that has this problem. So clearly just knowing about mass shootings isn't causing them.