u235

Maybe if the people who were inclined to commit news-grabbing crimes knew of the reporting aftermath they'd hesitate. If they realized that no one was really going to be interested in their motivations, and only the lascivious details of what they did perhaps they might balk at becoming a tool of the media. The more innocent and vulnerable the victim, the more the criminal is objectified. The active example of this is the Amish school shootings.

In the order of events there's really not much to say. A guy went into an Amish school, ordered everyone but some young girls out, and then killed them and himself. The press is having a field day. If there are twenty ways to describe the same events, then there must be at least two hundred articles all describing the same content with sadistic glee. Every tid bit that comes out generates not a handful but a dump truck load of new articles all with the same text.

I don't think the press really gets it - that in cases like these less is actually better. After reaching a level of saturation, more or less within a day of the event, people already know about it and frankly don't care. In fact the more they report on it, the less people do care because they become immune to the events after the 150th telling. At a certain point it's the press that becomes disgusting, in the same way crows picking at road kill is disgusting. It's not informative, it's not really news. What's more the victims in question were Amish, and they don't like or want the intrusion.

If the press had any nads or self-esteem whatsoever they'd stfu and leave these people alone. What the public needs is a way to communicate to the press that we don't care, we don't want to hear it and that they need to earn their money the old way - by going out and finding new stories to tell. It's not like there's a lack of news, it's just that there's a lack of effort in going out and reporting it. At a certain point it's time to put down the pen and step away from the corpse, it's been picked clean...