Written by Joe Adgie

We’ve seen some real sad scenes in the last year– most notably from Newtown and Aurora.

We can’t imagine what the families of those lost are going through, nor will we try to. What we have seen coming from these atrocities, however, is sensationalism bordering on nauseating.

Thanks to the wonder of the 24/7 news cycle, the names “James Holmes” and “Adam Lanza” have become household names. The horrendous visage of Holmes and the deranged look on Lanza’s face became staples of the news, as the news outlets of America covered every last nook and cranny of just what happened on those horrendous days when those two individuals fired on innocent human beings.

As a news organization, we here at the Spectator acknowledge the fact that the media has the right to cover these stories how they feel is best for their organization. However, we believe that this gross excess of coverage causes more problems than it solves.

In fact, some feel that the excessive news coverage may serve to encourage copycat crimes. The film critic Roger Ebert probably summed it up best right after the shooting at Columbine in 1999.

“Events like this, if they are influenced by anything, are influenced by news programs,” he wrote in a 2003 review of the movie “Elephant.” “When an unbalanced kid walks into a school and starts shooting, it becomes a major media event. Cable news drops ordinary programming and goes around the clock with it. The story is assigned a logo and a theme song; these two kids (Harris and Klebold – the villains of Columbine) were packaged as the Trench Coat Mafia. The message is clear to other disturbed kids around the country: If I shoot up my school, I can be famous.”

None of us here at the Spectator feel that this is a good way to cover an atrocity like what we’ve seen in the news. In fact, at least one of us on the editorial staff has become discouraged from working for the news media due to what we’ve seen lately, and we can’t help but wonder just how this sensationalized media BS is affecting some deranged psychopath somewhere here in America.

A few years ago, a forensic psychiatrist went on television and detailed just what is the best way to cover these atrocities – if you want to avoid tragedies like this in the future.

“If you don’t want to propagate more mass murders, don’t start the story with sirens blaring,” Dr. Park Dietz said. “Don’t have photographs of the killer. Don’t make this 24/7 coverage. Do everything you can not to make the body count the lead story, and not to make the killer some kind of anti-hero. Do localize this story to the affected community and as make it boring as possible in every other market, because every time we have intense saturation coverage of a mass murder, we expect to see one or two more within a week.”

We here at the Spectator agree with that whole-heartedly.