Several French newspapers and broadcasters announced last week that in future they will not use pictures of those responsible for terrorist attacks to avoid giving them “posthumous glorification”. In a country reeling from the horror of the Nice Bastille Day killings and the brutal slaying of a Catholic priest, and with the attacks in Paris still fresh in the mind, the French media feel that showing images of murderers who consider themselves martyrs is not only distasteful but also bolsters the Isis propaganda machine.
Europe 1 radio said it would not be naming terrorists, something resisted by other news outlets, including BFMTV. It won’t be showing pictures but it will continue to name terrorists. “We have to guard against not informing people,” said its editorial director.
And fearing copycat acts of terrorism, Professor Michael Jetter of the University of Western Australia called for the media to treat these attacks in the same guarded way that suicide is reported. He believes that blanket press coverage gives would-be terrorists the incentive to carry out further outrages.
Some, including the Observer’s Jason Burke, author of several books on terrorism, feel this misses the point: those seeking to glorify and emulate the action of others probably aren’t looking at mainstream media: it’s the jihadis’ exploitation of social media that has to be tackled.
Finding a balance between the duty to report and the responsibility not to inspire is also currently occupying those concerned with other mass killings – those carried out by disturbed teenagers, as we saw in Munich recently.
Last weekend, every British Sunday newspaper carried front-page pictures of 18-year-old Ali David Sonboly and extensive coverage of the attack in which he killed nine young people and injured 27 others before turning the gun on himself. The Observer was no exception, leading the front page with the story, using a large image of the killer and devoting three pages to reaction and analysis.
But increasingly, academics and ethicists are questioning whether the media should devote so much space or airtime to these solo killers, citing the dangers of copycat attacks.
Sonboly certainly seems to have been an obsessive copycat, planning his shooting to coincide with the fifth anniversary of the mass murder of teenagers carried out by rightwinger Anders Breivik in Norway, an event and subsequent trial that attracted huge media attention. Sonboly had collected news coverage of Breivik’s killings and owned a book entitled Why Kids Kill: Inside the Minds of School Shooters. Its author, Dr Peter Langman, who has spent years studying 10 young killers, last week told the US investigative magazine and website Mother Jones: “Having a role model or an ideology that supports their violent intentions may serve the purpose of transforming what is otherwise aberrant and abhorrent into something admirable. It validates their urge toward violence.” And in an interview with the Observer he noted: “Sometimes they are wanting to make a name for themselves. As a nobody, they see the only way to be a somebody is to get international recognition for killing people.”
Sonboly certainly got international recognition for his heinous crime, courtesy of just about every media outlet in Europe. Newsdesks are on high alert during this particularly violent summer and when the news of the shootings broke it was feared that Munich might have become yet another Isis target, like Paris or Nice.
But even when it was clear that this was the act of a single teenager, websites and TV stations, working on the relentless 24-hour news cycle, carried on with the story, adding more detail, more interviews, more mobile camera footage; more ideas, academics would argue, to sow within impressionable minds.
Last year, using a mathematical contagion model more usually applied to predict earthquake aftershocks or the spread of diseases, researchers at Arizona State University and Northeastern Illinois University found that 30% of mass killings and 22% of school shootings appeared to have been inspired by previous events. They found that a temporary increase in probability of another attack lasted 13 days.
The debate on the use of images of both terrorists and lone killers continues in these offices and all newsrooms, including our own, would do well to consider these recommendations devised by journalists at Mother Jones:
■ Report on the perpetrator forensically and with dispassionate language.
■ Minimise the use of the perpetrator’s name.
■ Keep the perpetrator’s name out of headlines.
■ Keep the use of images of the perpetrator to a minimum.
■ Avoid using posed “pseudocommando” shots of the perpetrator.
■ Avoid using the perpetrator’s videos or manifestos except when clearly necessary or valuable to the reporting.
observer.reader@observer.co.uk
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