Media's Role in School Shootings

   
      I have found that media seemed to have contributed to the conversation around school shootings, both in a positive and negative way. Media has a large influence on how we gain information surrounding major events and how we approach and consider those major events. Media has an inherent bias, and I often see people become greatly influenced by the messages the media spreads and the side that they take when reporting the news. Media is supposed to be unbiased, but headlines in today's day and age are becoming more and more biased towards one side or the other. In addition, media often profits off of other's misfortune, without a care for the people who are suffering. I have seen this idea of profiting off of misfortune become even more prominent in the current state of affairs, and even more so regarding school shootings. 
     News outlets continuously show great interest in school shooters and school shootings themselves, but remain indifferent to creating change. For example, news outlets showed the chilling videos of Nikolas Cruz, the school shooter of the Parkland school shooting, plotting his mass murder and saying his thoughts on camera. The news outlets focused on every aspect of Nikolas Cruz after the Parkland school shooting happened, which has led to many saying that the attention the media gives school shooters is creating more troubled individuals who want fame and attention to be spurred to commit an atrocity such as a school shooting. The media is reluctant to focus on individuals, rather, they focus on the statistics. School shooters get so much more attention than the continuous efforts for gun reform or the victims of school shootings themselves, and the alarming rate of school shootings this year. Although this may sound gruesome, it seems as though the media is all the more eager to jump on a horrific occurrence, and even may want something terrible to happen because that is what gets people's attention. The news is eager to jump at any chance they can to get a juicy story, even if that means imposing upon the rights of those that are grieving and perhaps spurring more school shootings by giving attention to school shooters.  
       However, those news outlets seem to profit on misfortune, they aren't extremely terrible. Getting the news is a necessity. When something terrible happens, it is a necessity that we get all of the information that we can, and we use that information to prevent something worse from happening. Focusing on the perpetrator of school shootings is a necessity also, but I don't necessarily know if news outlets should focus as much as they do on them. School shootings are a complex and horrific issue. There needs to be coverage on them, so they don't become completely normalized, and instead regarded as the horrific events that they are. However, news outlets should be more mindful of how they report news and not necessarily just take advantage of it, instead, they should respect and honor victims and work to prevent this issue by spreading the news far and wide and focusing on efforts to stop these horrific occurrences from happening ever again. 

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