Popularizing mass murder

Posted by Marc Hodak on April 19, 2007 under Unintended consequences | Comments are off for this article

I’m certainly not claiming this is the intent of the mass media in response to the Virginia Tech shootings, but consider the following. The shooter, apparently between murders, sent out a media packet to NBC. The packet included his rambling, twisted fantasies, including his view of the Columbine killers as “martyrs.” It had a video and digital album showing in Rambo-like posturing. If, as the media says, a picture is worth a thousand words, then what are they doing posting the contents of this killer’s media kit?

I could forgive NBC if I took their response to incentives at face value. Murder stories sell, especially if gun play is involved, and NBC is in it for the money. But not all gun stories seem to be created equal. Consider the story of a similar shooting that happened just down the road at Appalachian Law School.

There, a former student went into the school building and shot six people, killing three. Two students, Tracy Bridges and Mikael Gross, independently ran to retrieve their personal weapons from their vehicles. They approached the shooter from different positions, and when Bridges yelled to the shooter to put down his weapon, the killer promptly complied, and was then tackled by a couple other students who were near by. You’d think this was a good story. It’s got violence, a villain, and heroes.

Here’s how the Associated Press State & Local Wire reported the incident that day:

A law school student upset about his grades went on a shooting spree Wednesday, killing three people and critically wounding three others before he was wrestled to the ground by students, officials said…

He said the gunman then went downstairs into a common area and opened fire on a crowd of students, killing one and wounding three others. He was tackled by four male students as he left the building.

“They just wanted the guy,” Briggs said. “They weren’t worried about their own personal safety.”

Gee, tackling an armed shooter sounds insanely heroic, if not suicidal�Ķunless you have that little extra piece of information that the shooter had already been immobilized by armed citizens.

By later in the afternoon, AP had more details, including names, such as “the gunman” Odighizuwa:

After the shootings, Odighizuwa left the building and was tackled and held down by several male students, including 30-year-old Todd Ross of Johnson City, Tenn.

“He came out and walked down on the sidewalk, had his hands up in the air with the gun. At some point I yelled his name and told him to drop the gun and to get on the ground,” Ross said.

Odighizuwa dropped the gun, and another student then confronted him and distracted him.

“And then I ran across and tackled him,” Ross said.

Two or three other students then helped him subdue Odighizuwa.

The other news sources were no better in relating this strange version of the story:

“The gunman who was identified as a fellow student now is in state police custody after he was tackled by other students.” – CNN Live Today

“Three people were killed, including the school’s dean, and three others wounded before students tackled the suspect.” – CBS Evening News

What about NBC, always ready to play up a good story?

“State police in Virginia are crediting law students at Appalachian for preventing further loss of life, saying they overpowered the gunman and held him until police could arrive.” – NBC Nightly News

No mention of the guns used to capture this guy, who was portrayed as the only “gunman.”

The next day, with more information, AP wrote a 400 word story solely about the capture of the killer. Not a word about the use of guns to subdue him. Neither were the existence of other guns mentioned by the Chicago Tribune, LA Times, Seattle Times, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Toronto Star, Washington Post or almost any other major outlet. Only the New York Times, in a 900 word story, mentioned the fact that anyone else had a gun during the apprehension. Even that writing was peculiarly subdued:

���We���re trained to run into the situation instead away from it,��� said one of the three, Mikael Gross, 34, of Charlotte, N.C., who ran to his car for his bulletproof vest and service pistol before tackling the suspect.

Mr. Gross said that when he returned to the building he saw the gunman strike Ted Besen, another former officer, in the head. Mr. Gross said that he and another former officer, Tracy Bridges, then tackled the man.

The Times was careful to note that the students involved were “former officers.”

Back at NBC, a week later they got Tracy Bridges on the air.

Mr. BRIDGES: I went back to the classroom and told the students to get out, that there was a shooter in the building. We herded them out the back stairwell. At that time, me and Ted Besen went down the back stairwell, and my vehicle was parked in a parking spot between the shooter and the back stairwell. We seen the shooter, started to approach him, stopped at my vehicle, and got out my handgun, and started to approach Peter. At that time, Peter throwed up his hands and throwed his weapon down. Ted was first person to have contact with Peter, and Peter hit him one time in the face. So there was a little bit of a struggle there. After that, Ted pushed him back, me, Ted and another student, Todd Ross, took Peter to the ground and subdued him until we had some handcuffs to put him in.

COURIC: I should mention, Tracy, that you are a police officer, a trained police officer. You were one in���in North Carolina. And another student, I understand, who was able to help, Michael Gross, he handed you a pair of handcuffs so you could handcuff the suspect. Must have been incredibly fortuitous that you all had police training and a police background that you were able to���to act in such a���a quick and appropriate way.

Mr. BRIDGES: Yes, ma���am. It all kind of happened real fast. We, you know, just kind of done what we could at the time.

You can’t fault Mr. Bridges for not being the most articulate person put in front of the klieg lights. Aside from that, however, his story seemed a little cramped by god-knows what instructions he had gotten from the flashy NBC team. Katie carefully included the folks-don���t-try-this-at-home admonition by stressing that these guys had police training.

So, why would the media insist, as far as they could, on portraying the shooter as the only person with a gun? Because, they claim, they didn���t want to encourage vigilantism. They don���t want people to think that waving guns is a good thing. And when finally forced to mention that citizens had guns, they stressed the fact that they weren���t really ordinary citizens; they had “police training and a police background.” Fine.

But, then, how can a media, acutely aware of the long-term incentive effects of their coverage, justify the current coverage of the killer Cho, including his Rambo pics and explicit glorification of Columbine?

Katie?