Media coverage of events like the recent Montreal shootings always paint two pictures of perpetrators: cold-blooded killers and victims of circumstance.
Newspapers and TV wasted no time churning out predictably schizophrenic versions of the recent Montreal school-shootings. On the one hand there was extensive coverage of the killer's web-site vicious rantings; on the other he was described as "very disturbed." As usual the media wanted it both ways to horrify readers and viewers as much as possible: a cold-blooded killer and a misguided victim.
Which is it? Does our society breed killers like the Montreal shooter? Or do we have people among us who are just plain bad?
A day or so after the shootings a national paper ran an online poll asking if web-site hosts should be made to block hateful content like the Montreal shooter had on his. I was glad to see the majority voted "for," but when I mentioned the poll to friends they immediately denounced censorship. So again, which is it?
If our society is breeding killers by abusing and depriving children, exposing kids and teens to the worst of human behavior on TV and the internet, then we have to come down hard on abusive and deadbeat parents; we have to clean up the internet and comics or "graphic novels" as well as TV programs and movies. And we especially have to clean up video-games. Oh, but that's censorship.
Okay, so we let it all go as it's going and grow more and more horrified as it gets worse?
But there's another influence on potential killers. The day after the Montreal shootings some kid fired his pellet-gun in a school-bus. Refreshingly, one spokesperson described it as "stupid"; however, there was no comment on why he did it. How about to get a little of the attention the Montreal shooter was getting?
So perhaps we should cool off media-coverage of events like the shootings at Columbine and Dawson? Oops; censorship again.
The media has it both ways: vicious killers and people acting as they do because of the raw deal they got as they were growing up. But we can't have it both ways, at least not if we want things to get better or at least not get worse.
Of course we do much of what we do because of who we are, and we are who we are because of how we grew up. But either we start holding people responsible for their actions or we "medicalize" everything they do and futilely blame history.
