Johann Hari, commenting on the coverage of the hunt for the fugitive Raoul Moat, asks Did the media help to pull the trigger?
He writes: "The media has been lasciviously describing every blood-flecked cranny of the shooting incident in Northumbria this week, while blankly ignoring the most important question – did we help to pull the trigger?
"Every time there is a massacre by a mentally ill person, like Derrick Bird's last month, journalists are warned by psychologists that, if we are not very careful in our reporting, we will spur copycat attacks by more mentally ill people. We ignored their warnings. We reported the case in precisely the way they said was most risky. Are we now seeing the result?
The columnist cites research in the US by a forensic psychiatrist who argued that "saturation-level news coverage of mass murder causes, on average, one more mass murder in the next two weeks".
Hari goes on to discuss how the reverse - an absence of coverage - has been shown to diminish both murders and suicides. He concludes by asking:
Shouldn't the Press Complaints Commission develop strict guidelines now so we don't run this same slaughter-script next time? If we don't, we will be making a cold calculation – that flashier front pages and extra revenue in a slow summer is more important to us than saving innocent lives. Is the British media more interested in making a killing than in preventing one?
Source: The Independent
