Murder-o-rama

If I could put up with his unrelenting misery, I'd refer to Charlie Brooker as "my future second husband" quite often. As it is, I normally stop myself before letting such a drastic statement emerge from my face. Nevertheless, I'm quite content for him to be my future close friend, or even future brother-in-law, at a push. This is because he says stuff like this:

"Repeatedly showing us a killer's face isn't news, it's just rubbernecking. And, what's more, this sort of coverage only serves to turn this murdering little twat into a sort of nihilistic pin-up boy."

He was talking about a German mass-killer (who I'm not going to name or dwell on, for reasons that will become clear) as part of his Newswipe programme, which went out in March of this year on BBC4. But the same could easily be applied to the coverage of two mass-killings that have taken place this week in the US: one at a Texas army base and the other in an Orlando office building.

The news coverage of these things is always the same: It starts with something like "X number of people have been killed by a disgruntled [insert job title here] in [town A], who donned a [insert type of coat here] and wrought his sick revenge upon [co-workers / family / school chums] by pumping them full of [bullets / stabby wounds / bonks on head] before turning the [gun / samurai sword / lead piping] on himself."

The story is talked and talked about, it's picked apart and drooled over by any journalist who secretly always wanted to be a detective. The killer's face is suddenly all over your screen and your front page. "Oh my god, it's Bob", people say: "I went to school with him!" And now he's the most famous man in the country, if not the world, for a few days.

Until the next one, that is.

The episode of Newswipe mentioned above referenced a Forensic Psychologist called Dr Park Dietz, who was interviewed for a British news channel soon after the aforementioned German mass-killing. And I quote:

"Don't start the story with sirens blaring; don't have photographs of the killer; don't make this 24/7 coverage; do everything you can not to make the bodycount the lead story, not to make the killer some kind of anti-hero. Do localise this story to the affected community and make it as boring as possible in every other market, because every time we have intense saturation coverage of a mass murderer we expect to see one or two more within a week."

I understand that TV companies and newspapers have to make money in a competitive environment. I understand that any news source that doesn't accompany a story like this with a photo of the killer will seem like it's on the back foot.

But there are plenty of other things to report on, plenty of other stories to investigate, and even plenty of other ways of getting the same story across. And the worst culprits are often the BBC, who are supposed to have a responsibility towards their viewers, who pay directly for this coverage.

It's not hard to see how a vulnerable, unstable, desperate and angry person can see footage like this and think that a mass-killing (preferably with a higher bodycount than the last one) will make their mark on the world. And, thanks to our news networks, they're absolutely right.


Charlie Brooker's Newswipe, March 2009 (watch from 5:50 to 8:50)