In the days following December 21, many newspapers reported on the attack by a student on the University of Prague in which 14 people were killed by gunfire. The attack, the most serious of its kind in the Czech Republic's recent history, has sparked a nationwide debate about how newspapers should cover such an event: some journalists argued that publication of the perpetrator's name, photo and possible motivations was prohibited would give him what he wanted, which was some notoriety, and inspire other people to do similar things. However, others said that readers would have been better informed if they had studied this person in depth.
The debate essentially centers on mass shooting contagion, a theory that suggests excessive media coverage of a mass shooting can “infect” other people and lead to an increase in similar events. In other countries where these attacks are much more common, particularly the United States, they have been discussed in and out of newspapers for years.
As is often the case in situations of this kind, a few hours after the attack in Prague, several newspapers began to publish the full name and all available information about the person responsible for the attack. However, other newspapers had limited themselves to publishing his name or omitted it, publishing only the information absolutely necessary to reconstruct the attack. Police had also asked to restrict the dissemination of information about the person responsible for the attack – who was only a suspect at the time – as he believed his main aim was to gain some notoriety. In the following days, Czech police added that they had identified eight attack threats online that were inspired by the threat against the university.
Several journalists then wrote articles or gave interviews in which they explained their choice or the editorial line of the newspaper for which they worked.
Already on Friday, December 22nd, the editor-in-chief of the Czech weekly Reflex, Martin Bartkovský, published an article in which he explained why his magazine, which is conservative in orientation and is considered something between a daily newspaper and a tabloid, decided against it to publish the full name and biography of the person responsible for the attack. Reflex had limited itself to describing the attack and providing information that was considered to be of public interest, such as the fact that, according to the police, it was not a terrorist attack. Bartkovský had written that a further step would mean legitimizing the author, at the risk of inspiring other people to do the same.
A similar article by journalist Jan Klesla was also published a few days later in Lidové noviny, the largest Czech newspaper.
Both articles describe the decision to publish information about the student's life as a way for newspapers to generate traffic to their websites and exploit readers' morbid curiosity about a person who was the center of attention at the time. In an interview for Radio Prague International, Bartkovský criticized his colleagues for going to the city where the student was born and raised to interview his neighbors, claiming that this was a “harmful and wrong” practice and ultimately gave him money only visibility (e.g. In Italian newspapers it is common to interview relatives, friends and neighbors, even of people suspected of less serious crimes.
Other journalists argued instead that publishing news about the massacre, as well as the history and personality of the person responsible, was part of journalists' right (and duty) to report, inform readers, and stimulate public debate. For example, there was a lot of talk about the fact that the person responsible was a gifted student with no criminal record; but also that eight firearms were found in his house, all of which were purchased legally.
All this has led to the opening of a political debate about the use of weapons in the country and the need to tighten the criteria for owning weapons, since it is very easy to buy weapons in the Czech Republic and the current government has the rules for the purchase and ownership of these devices have been relaxed.
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The journalists, who decided not to publish too much information about the incident, also justified their decision by the fact that the issue is being covered and studied in the United States, where it has been discussed for more than ten years. For example, Klesla's article begins with a quote from FBI Director James Comey after a well-known shooting at an Orlando nightclub in 2016 that killed 49 people. Regarding the person responsible, Comey said, “We're not going to use his name because part of what motivates these sick people to do these things is a twisted idea of fame or notoriety.”
The theory at issue in this case is that of mass shooting contagion, which states that providing too much information about the identity and motivations of the person responsible for a shooting increases the risk that he or she will inspire other people to commit similar attacks become. According to this theory, in cases like these, it would be better to give readers only the absolutely necessary information, such as whether the person responsible for the crime is still there, and to focus on other elements – such as the people attacked – and to leave this The police have to take care of the manager.
Widespread media coverage of an armed attack inspires others to repeat what seems clear: it often happens that people who carry out such attacks quote those responsible for previous massacres. The person responsible for the Prague attack also wrote messages on Telegram praising two Russian teenagers who carried out mass shootings in their schools.
The way in which certain events or behaviors can influence other people or cause them to do the same is a mechanism that has been studied in the social sciences since the late 19th century, but there is a possibility that it is a factor for the prevalence of mass shootings is a much newer theory. In the United States, we began to talk about this after the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, on December 14, 2012, in which a twenty-year-old boy killed 27 people, including 20 children, and then initially committed suicide until the police arrive.
During the investigation, it was discovered that the person responsible for the attack was obsessed with mass murder, particularly the 1999 murder committed at Columbine, Colorado High School. The “Columbine Massacre” was the first event of its kind to attract national media attention: newspapers published a lot of information about the two high school students who carried out the attack, and it was repeatedly cited as the event that changed the methods of many people inspired mass shootings that occurred at U.S. high schools in the following years.
A 2015 analysis published in Mother Jones magazine identified 21 people who had committed mass shootings and said they were specifically inspired by the Columbine incident.
In 2016, after a series of mass shootings in the United States, including in Orlando, and several terrorist attacks in Europe, particularly in France, many newspapers reported on the contagion theory: The New York Times and the Washington Post reported several studies that did so were carried out during these years and helped to popularize this theory.
Statistician Sherry Towers argued that one could accurately calculate the likelihood of a new mass shooting based on media coverage of a previous case. However, other studies concluded that this phenomenon could not be accurately quantified and it was difficult to prove a direct causal relationship.
It is true that mass shootings in the United States have increased in recent years, as while there have been cases in which those responsible said they were inspired by previous episodes, it is also true that most violent episodes were inspired by them This type does not receive much attention in the media: massacres of family members or those associated with crime occur again and again, but often receive little attention in the newspapers. Furthermore, there are many motivations that lead a person to make such an extreme gesture, and giving too much importance to the role of the media may lead to a trivialization of a complex phenomenon.
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However, most experts agree that attacks in public places that resulted in many deaths and were widely reported in the media have led to similar actions.
In these studies, the connection becomes even clearer when the attacks are based on a specific ideology, such as the “incel” ideology: a theory popular in some online communities that affirms male supremacy and accuses women of not playing their role respect by depriving men of their role presumed right to sexual relations. Those responsible for the shootings in Isla Vista, California, in 2014 and Toronto, Canada, in 2018 specifically cited these ideas as motivation for their attacks.
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Particular attention was paid to the full or partial publication of the letters and “manifestos” of those responsible for these attacks: in 2007, a student killed 32 people on the campus of Virginia Tech University in the United States and then committed suicide. He was the first to start the attack NBC News released a 23-page “manifesto” with videos and photos explaining the reasons for his attack. These materials were widely disseminated and discussed in the US media and are believed to have contributed to the spread of mass shootings. What was controversial was not only their distribution, but also the fact that they defined his text as a “manifesto”, which was rather delusional and contained several nonsensical sentences.
This term is still used today to describe the messages spread online by those responsible for these attacks. However, according to many, it should be put aside to avoid comparison with real political or artistic posters and not to legitimize them.
Following the spread of the contagion theory, various initiatives emerged that explicitly called on the media not to broadcast the names and motives of those responsible for these attacks in order to avoid imitation. The best known is the Advanced Training Center for Rapid Response for Law Enforcement's (ALERRT) Don't Name Them campaign.
However, due to increasing use of the Internet and social media, it has become more difficult to restrict the distribution of this material. In 2022, an 18-year-old killed ten African Americans in Buffalo, USA, and began the attack live on Twitch. The platform ended the live broadcast after two minutes, but a few days earlier the attacker had published online a 180-page text and a 672-page diary in which he revealed his racist and supremacist ideas. In the days following the attack, the FBI said that the distribution of this video and texts may have led to copycat episodes and urged them not to distribute them: However, they were available online for a long time, particularly in certain forums, and were poorly controlled Platforms.