MASS SHOOTINGSNews Media Heeding Call to Limit Naming Perpetrators in Mass Shootings
Is reducing the number of times the perpetrator’s name is used in news coverage in the public interest? It certainly diminishes the notoriety of the perpetrator and reduces any incentive to become famous. Yet when the name is not used, other more relevant details, such as the person’s motives and background, may also not be reported.
The day after a man opened fire at a Collierville, Tennessee, grocery store, killing one person and wounding 13 others before turning the gun on himself, local police conducted an impromptu news conference to identify the perpetrator.
But instead of saying the suspect’s name out loud on that sunny morning in September 2021, Collierville Police Lt. David Townsend held up a yellow piece of paper with the name “Uk Thang” and the birth date “10-17-91.”
Nothing else was said about the suspect at the press conference, other than that he was a “third-party vendor” for the store. Later reporting determined he was the franchise operator for the sushi counter at the store, but he was not a Kroger employee.
That press conference has become typical of the way law enforcement has reacted after mass shootings: Never mention the suspect’s name or offer much information about the person. The goal is to encourage the news media to avoid using the perpetrator’s name and thus deprive the perpetrator of publicity. As my research has found, for the past 10 years the news media has followed suit by reducing the number of times the name of a mass shooter is reported.
Now that the suspect has been arrested, it will be interesting to see how the news media handles the reporting of the name of the alleged perpetrator of the April 12, 2022, Brooklyn subway shooting. Many mass shootings end with suspects turning the weapons on themselves or being killed by police. The Brooklyn suspect initially evaded capture, so police revealed the name as part of efforts to arrest him.
But is reducing the number of times the perpetrator’s name is used in news coverage in the public interest? It certainly diminishes the notoriety of the perpetrator and reduces any incentive to become famous.
Yet when the name is not used, other more relevant details, such as the person’s motives and background, may also not be reported.
Change Came in 2012
I got interested in the issue after several high-profile mass shooting perpetrators were not named out loud by police in the aftermath of attacks. And it seemed that the news media followed suit.
I analyzed how often perpetrators were named in news articles within a week of mass shootings between 1999 and 2021.
