Josh Bartlett: Don’t make excuses for behavior of mass murderers

To The Daily Sun,

A number of days ago there was a well-written letter proposing that we no longer refer to mass murderers as nothing more than murderers. Don’t make excuses for them or their sick behavior.

This is a good suggestion, but I do not believe it goes far enough.

With the trend among so many young people wanting to be “famous” with little or no regard for how that fame is earned, there could be a simple action to curb some of the actions of some of fame-seeking mass murderers. The media need to stop naming the murderers, showing their pictures, or detailing their lives. They also need to stop giving voice to what the murders claim as their reasons.

Some years ago, the British print and electronic media voluntarily stopped broadly publicizing the actions of the thugs who rioted at football matches. Without the fame and the front page news the hooligans were less inclined to cause trouble. If it wasn’t the lead story on the 10 o’clock news, it wasn’t as much fun for the drunken brawlers.

I suggest that our media bears some responsibility for these horrible incidents and could help to reduce them by not giving fame to these demented murderers. Nor should the press, social websites and broadcast media give voice to their sick “causes” mentioning their “manifestos” or sick rants on social media.

This is not impinging on freedom of the press; the responsible media already decline to identify victims of rape, and child victim names or photos. Restraint and reasonableness may go a long way to help reduce this scourge of our society. The media could report these incidents if necessary, but do not give encouragement to these mass murderers and their copy-cats. Don’t make them “famous”.

Josh Bartlett

Moultonborough