[Feedback Please] "If It Bleeds It Leads: How the American Media Perpetuates and Profits from Mass Shootings"

We published If It Bleeds It Leads: How the American Media Perpetuates and Profits from Mass Shootings recently. Below is the intro. Curious to get feedback on the piece:

“I have repeatedly told CNN and our other media the following if you don’t want to propagate more mass murders: Don’t start the story with sirens blaring. Don’t have photos of the killer. Don’t make it 24/7 coverage. Do everything you can not to make the body count the lead story. Localize the story to the affected community. And make it as boring as possible in every other market.”
~ Dr. Park Dietz, Forensic Psychologist, on how to stop mass shootings

Video games. 4chan. “Toxic masculinity.” These are just a few of the media’s favorite folk devils when it comes to assigning blame for mass shootings in America. However, there is startling evidence that how the media covers these tragedies makes them culpable in perpetuating future ones. 

This might sound like an outlandish claim, but it’s supported by evidence from no less an authority than the National Institutes of Health. It’s related to a well-established phenomenon of copycat suicides known as the Werther Effect. Other countries’ medias have taken steps to minimize the Werther Effect through self-imposed industry standards on suicide reporting, and many of these standards have parallels with the coverage of mass shootings. 

The American media currently has no industry standard practices for how to cover either suicides or mass shootings. However, one can easily see the difference between how mass shootings and suicides are covered. Whereas suicides are treated as sombre tragedies, mass shootings often have the sensationalism turned up to 11. There’s a detailed discussion of the shooter’s life story, motives and methods. Strong evidence suggests that this both encourages and instructs potential mass shooters. 

Statistically-speaking mass shootings represent a tiny portion of all deaths in the United States. For example, 2017 was the deadliest year for mass shootings in America with a total of 117 people killed. For context, 102 people die from automobile accidents every day according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Institute.

Despite the low frequency of these tragedies, the media pays outsized attention to them for self-serving reasons which are both political and economic: There's a demonstrated anti-gun agenda amongst America's media. And there's the ongoing shift in the media's business model to attention-based revenue that results in ever-more sensational news coverage and "clickbait" headlines.

The lurid attention to mass shootings is profitable for America's press, cable news networks, and social media companies - despite the consequences encapsulated by the Werther Effect. Thus a look at the role the American media plays in perpetuating these rampage killers is in order.

You can keep reading If It Bleeds It Leads: How the American Media Perpetuates and Profits from Mass Shootings on our site at Ammo.com.

One of our motivations for sharing it here is because we don’t allow comments on our site due to all the moderation which trolls, bots, etc. take up. However we do read what fellow Full30 users say about our work, so don’t hesitate to chime in below.

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I love your articles and get the emails

If you want your own category here to link for comments we can do that and thump trolls all day long, no problem

as to this story,

MSM is working to disarm the US.

We’ve been de-industrialized, we’re conditioned to be service based, next step, less voluntary servitude and more outright enslavement.

And with that comment :rabbit2: :hole:

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Thanks for the kind words + offer Robert! Alex will email you about getting our own category here. (Not sure exactly what that’d entail.)

We’ve been de-industrialized, we’re conditioned to be service based, next step, less voluntary servitude and more outright enslavement.

Dystopian and terrifying. Not disagreeing.

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It doesn’t play for me, tell me he did a great Pachino imitation?

image

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It played for me. Where’s the emoji for shaking one’s head at craven virtue signaling by the U.S. Open?!

We’ll feature this in our upcoming BULLETin newsletter this Friday.

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The MSM constantly sensationalizes this type of stories.
Wording to Pictures in the background showing guns or knives that have no connection to the story itself.
And then if they are proven to be wrong they bury their retraction in a 5 second snipit between a ton of commercials hoping we don’t see it.
True Journalism is Dead, it died along with Ethics and Truth.
Great Post ADC.
Now if the rest of the world would hear the pop as they extract their minds from their backsides.

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MSM is practicing what was first called “Yellow Journalism” in the early 20th and late 19th centuries to get more emotional contact with readers and rake in more profits. MSM is doing what they jeered “the National Enquirer” in a sort of success. They are focusing on firearms because it has become the “sacred” target that relative hands off due to political influence and former universal utility. They are trying to stir up the people in a hysterical group that champions ignorance instead of rational discussions.

We are better than that description.

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You are correct.
Started by Randolph Hearst Sr. in the New York Journal.

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Great Article! The MSM is key in this. They are spreading propaganda on the order of the Hitler regime against the Jewish population, only now gun owners are the target.

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I have seen a few articles from ammo.com, but I wasn’t aware of the vast archive. Thanks for posting @ammodotcom

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IF you could get all the media coverage stopped on these shooting and even the liberal media to stop ? They would find a way to use it against you…You would see media coverage of people in certain states handing in guns and smiling all the while out of camera shot a bunch of Machinegun armed state thugs holding there kids hostage…Headline…1000’s of Citizens turning in Guns to help end the Violence…

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I’ve been saying for years the MSM is culpable -if not fully complicit- of stoking copycats. They’ll grasp at anything and everything that keeps them even the slightest bit relevant in a world where they’ve already ceased to exist. They’ve essentially become sensationalized necro-news outlets for the uninformed.

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Excellent article. Hits the nail right on the head. Believe it or not, we were discussing this exact problem more than 17 years ago when I was working on a degree that centered on propaganda and public persuasion. The issue is well known within the circles of psychology as well as mass media…but as you stated now (and was stated many many years ago) “If it bleeds, it leads”…and that unfortunately is not likely to change, because the MSM, just like other blood sucking vermin, thrives on the blood and bodies of innocent victims.
Great article…thanks for posting here!

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And also inflaming people will suicidal tendencies. With a portion of those people of the “I’ll take as many with me as I can” mentality. People will always find a way to commit violence and homicide, its just what humans do. But without the 24 hour news cycle pumping this shit through their mentally deranged skulls I do see the public mass murdering being reduced by a lot.

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You’re welcome, and thanks for the kind words!

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I’ve been saying for years the MSM is culpable -if not fully complicit- of stoking copycats. They’ll grasp at anything and everything that keeps them even the slightest bit relevant in a world where they’ve already ceased to exist. They’ve essentially become sensationalized necro-news outlets for the uninformed

The MSM is at the bleeding edge (no pun intended) of sharing the worst and scariest stories on the planet, and then broadcasting them w/the highest levels of emotion…non-stop 24/7. Given the ever-increasing interconnectedness of our world, that makes their job easier and easier (seemingly everyone has a camera phone nowadays). The world is actually getting a lot better statistically-speaking (less absolute poverty, lower child mortality, longer life spans, etc.). But that doesn’t move units in an attention-based news economy, so they go to the extreme to find the worst of the worst and then shove it in our faces all the time.

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