Psychiatrists call for media to self-censor when reporting on mass murderers
Radio National, 24/09/08 05.33pm
Some psychiatrists are calling on the media to exercise self-censorship when it comes to playing videos made by mass murderers
Mark Colvin: Some psychiatrists are calling on the media to exercise self-censorship when it comes to playing videos made by mass murderers. The argument is that broadcasting videos after massacres like the school shooting in Finland yesterday glorifies the act and increases the likelihood of copycat killings. Psychiatrists want media organisations to get together and agree to a code of conduct which would ban the broadcast or any such tape. Joe O’Brien reports.
Joe O’Brien: Another school shooting has shocked people around the world. A trainee chef in Finland took a gun to his college and killed 10 students and staff before shooting himself. The 22-year-old had posted a video on YouTube last week, showing him firing a gun virtually down the lens of the camera and threatening to kill. Stills from that video have been plastered across the front pages of newspapers, and the video has been played through today on television programs.
[Excerpts of television reports]
Newsreader 1: The intentions of a killer posted on YouTube, 10 die at a college in Finland.
Newsreader 2: Atticus Schubert has the latest on the day’s sad events. We must, though, warn you that many of you may find these pictures unsettling.
[End of excerpts]
Joe O’Brien: Psychiatrist Ian Hickie was watching the coverage today with dismay.
Ian Hickie: A lot of people who are struggling and feeling ineffective in the world, feeling harmed by the world, see images of somebody else apparently in a powerful way affecting other people, affecting other people’s lives and being made a major identity by this style of print and TV coverage and feel that this is in some way an appropriate way to express their own feelings.
Joe O’Brien: Yesterday’s Finland shooting is the third incident in the past year or so where a young murderer has recorded a hate video before going on a rampage. There was another in Finland last November, where eight people were killed. The 18-year-old also posted a video on YouTube. And there was the Virginia Tech shooting. Thirty-two people were killed and the gunman sent a video to a US TV station. In all the cases, the videos have received extensive media coverage. Here’s Ian Hickie.
Ian Hickie: I don’t think there’s any doubt that when we study these phenomena worldwide and the spread, the contagion effect, the spread of these things in worldwide communities, that is the worldwide media, and that is mainly the mass media - it’s mainly free-to-air television showing these images and the print media repeating these images in wide circulation that leads to the copycat-style phenomena on an ongoing basis.
Joe O’Brien: He says the media has to wake up to its responsibility and stop the broadcasts.
Ian Hickie: It’s irresponsible to show the individual himself, that individual behaving in a threatening way, that individual using firearms, that individual expressing a set of views threatening the world and appearing to be powerful and appearing that they’re respected by the world for expressing those views. This is simply just sensationalism and glorification of bad and damaging behaviours by the media for other reasons. It’s not responsible reporting.
Joe O’Brien: The Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance says it’s too easy to blame the media in these situations. Alliance spokesman Jonathan Este.
Jonathan Este: It’s all very easy in the aftermath of a terrible, tragic incident like this to sort of leap on the media and say that the way they’re covering stories like this will lead to copycats. I’m not altogether sure in how far that’s true, but I think what’s very important, and the point we’d like to make is that if these sort of stories make us think about gun laws, then that’s very important.
Joe O’Brien: Ian Hickie dismisses the argument that the vision was already out there anyway.
Ian Hickie: I think the argument it’s being copied off the internet is a nonsense argument. The number of people that see each of these sets of videos or recordings on an internet-type style thing is very small compared with the mass media audience. And it’s that mass media audience, a whole range of other young people who would not otherwise be seeing this material who are exposed to it. And those who have difficulties are the ones who may respond to it in an unusual way.
Joe O’Brien: Professor Hickie’s calling for an industry agreement not to broadcast the videos. For the moment though, it’s clear there’s next to no chance of a media ban.
Mark Colvin: Joe O’Brien.
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