The National Rifle Association has declared a new culprit for mass shootings in America: the “mainstream media.”
“No one on this planet benefits more from mass shootings and motivates more people to become mass shooters than our mainstream media,” Colion Noir, a gun rights activist, declared in a video published by NRA TV on Thursday. “Sure, they love to get up in front of the camera and sell the lie that the mass shootings are all the NRA’s fault, and falsely claim that the NRA is a soulless organization selling guns to killers for profit. But all my years of watching these events play out have led me to one conclusion: The mainstream media love mass shootings.”
If that wasn’t clear enough, Noir repeated the claim: “The mainstream media love mass shootings.”
Noir clarified that he doesn’t believe that people in the media actively want innocent people to die, but that the media purportedly has an interest in these mass shootings happening because they drive a lot of traffic and views to news outlets. He describes the shootings as Game of Thrones, House of Cards, Seinfeld, and Friends — in terms of ratings — for the media.
“Tragedy is their business model,” he said.
Noir goes on to claim that all of this attention to mass shootings may inspire more mass shooters. “The shooters are the star. [The media] sensationalize everything about these killers,” Noir said. “And guess who’s watching? That’s right. Another lonely, ignored, mentally disturbed psychopath looking to make a name for himself. And you, the mainstream media, just put out the casting call for the next mass shooter.”
Noir isn’t totally wrong on that last point. There is research that suggests mass shootings spread like a contagion — essentially, some people hear about a mass shooting through widespread media coverage and decide to carry out their own brutal attacks.
But that doesn’t mean the media can just ignore these events. The public cares about mass shootings, and they’re part of the big public health and safety crisis created by America’s abundance of guns. So the media has to report on mass shootings, and part of reporting on them means covering the causes — which almost always requires covering the shooter, his potential motives, and how he got his weapons.
That’s not to say the media isn’t trying to do what it can to prevent the contagion. Media outlets have actively discussed this problem over the years, trying to figure out how to avoid giving these shooters the fame they might desire while still reporting the news. One of Vox’s first articles about mass shootings was on this exact issue. Personally, I make it a policy to avoid mentioning a shooter’s name unless it’s totally necessary to the story.
With that said, the implication that the media salivates at the possibility of another mass shooting, as Noir claimed, is ridiculous. I have been covering these travesties for years — and I am personally sick of it. Every single reporter I know, inside and outside of Vox, who has to cover these tragedies does so in almost constant horror that this keeps happening. It’s incredibly offensive to suggest that the journalists working on this beat — and actively reporting on solutions to prevent these shootings — are in any way glad to see more mass killings.
But this is a convenient bit of blame-shifting for the NRA. The NRA is the major national organization standing against gun control, lobbying lawmakers into opposing any new restrictions on firearms and propagating an interpretation of the Second Amendment that makes it hard to pass policies that significantly limit access to guns. Based on the research, that makes it more likely that America’s extraordinary levels of gun violence will remain extraordinary.
The NRA, in this video, is ignoring its role in perpetuating gun violence and passing the buck to someone else.
The reality, though, is that reporters like me would love to never cover another mass shooting again. If only we could.
