Charlie Brooker's Newswipe 25/03/09

Charlie Brooker is fantastic: On how news is reported link On how mass shooting is reported and about the saturation ▶ this video

I'm from the UK and I'd go so far as to say the majority of the British press are toxic. They have an incredibly inflated view of themselves and they couldn't care less about what's in the public interest (just look at how they've responded to the recommendations of the Leveson Inquiry which investigated the repulsive ethics and culture of the British press). The UK press empahtically follow their own self-interests and agendas (and that includes broadsheets like The Guardian). There will always be individual reporters who rise above the abysmally low standard of reporting - but they are a tiny minority. TV news is better in my opinion - they at least aspire to some measure of impartiality. These clips from Charlie Brooker (British TV presenter) give a good sense of the formulaic way news is reported (strong language in the videos). link ▶ this video

I want to share this video from Charlie Booker. ▶ this video Basically at the end the forensic psychiatrist says that giving this intense superficial coverage about the gunman only encourages more copycat killers. I don't know what compelled me to click the link even after watching the video and telling myself to stop following more coverage, but that may be all the more reason why it needs to stop. I honestly don't care what his intentions are, and I think the biggest punishment to him would be if everyone just forgot his name and he be left to pass the rest of his life in jail sitting in relative obscurity.

This kind of thing always makes me think of the well-known Charlie Brooker (creator of Black Mirror) clip: ▶ this video

> you signal a green light to all the other potential shooters that this is how you get attention. As pointed out by an ever prescient Charlie Brooker almost ten fucking years ago. ( ▶ this video ). On a similar subject, The Samaritans publish very specific and thorough guidelines as to how to report and publish suicides ( link ) which are still ignored by many even if unknowingly.

Showing victims vs suspects is a con. It's not a secret how to responsibly cover shootings in the news, and hasn't been for 30 years. ▶ this video

For the same reason they remove porn. You can still enjoy the murder porn by watching 24/7 hour endless media masturbation. How to report mass murders - Charlie Brooker ▶ this video

I empathize with your view, but I very much disagree with you. 1) It's an experiment, there should never be any disagreement with an experiment unless the experiment itself can cause harm to someone/something. The results of this experiment should be evaluated closely, and if they make new guidelines for HN I'm fully onboard. But it's an experiment. 2) The person who shot the gun did not read HN, I may be wrong but I feel this is a fair assumption. I'm not saying no one here could shoot a gun in public, but they wouldn't come here as anything but a complete troll and shoot a gun based on some crap story like that. If I'm wrong in this then the experiment is terrible and stop it now. But I very much doubt it. 3) The issue is that news in general has degraded. This degradation of journalism has led to many of the issues we experience today. If experimenting on HN can lead to some sort of anecdotal evidence that Politics = bad for communities I'm all for it. I believe part of the issue is pointed to in this video. ▶ this video 24 Hours news is the issue. 24 Hours politics is the issue. Taking a purge is a great idea. 4) HN should not be where you get your news about politics.

This is mostly true, but I don't think the evidence is there for videogames. What you might find evidence for w.r.t videogames is that they'll change your behavioral responses under stress, for example having played many shooter games, and given a real gun, then put in a stressful situation, you're more likely to pull the trigger on another human than otherwise. For mass shooting, absolutely true: ▶ this video (Skip to 1:30 if you want an argument from authority.) I suspect it's true for suicides as well. People underestimate copycat / monkey-see-monkey-do influences.

> I get the "sexinesss" of denying the person the attention they wanted, but it doesn't help society. I think you have it totally backwards. If anything, it's "sexy" for news agencies to barf out everything they can know or speculate about the person. It lets them grab eyeballs, ratings, and fill airtime and pages. In contrast, removing the "notoriety payoff" is the sober , serious , and "wise" approach for society. There's a huge correlation between media-obsession after a shooting-tragedy and another attack occurring soon afterwards. [0] > We need to delve No, "we", the media-consuming audience, emphatically do NOT need to do any delving. 99.9% of us will never have expertise, and even if we did would be unable to act upon it. The people who do (sociologists, psychologists, etc.) are going to be able to get at the data anyway, they don't need to get their primary research from the 24-hour flashing-klaxon news-blast. [0] ▶ this video

Very well written and interesting. While some people put the blame on firearms (lets not turn this into a debate on gun control) i believe that its the media attention that is the biggest culprit. ▶ this video

Most people don't. This seems to be quite prevalent in most societies. News media doing anything to get a story to grab viewers. Another example is school shootings: ▶ this video