WATCH: Get the latest news updates on DPTV with Molly Hughes
Tom Teves will not say the name of his son’s killer in this article.
He won’t even use a specific pronoun.
“That’s what it wants,” Teves said. “It wants to see its name and its face in the mainstream media.”
Since the shooting at the Century Aurora 16 movie theater that killed his son, Alex, and 11 others, Teves and his wife, Caren, and several other families of those slain have urged the media not to use the gunman’s name. But now — as the case’s long-awaited trial approaches and the families’ concerns grow about the kind of publicity the live-broadcast trial might receive — Teves’ push has coalesced into a campaign to change how the media covers all mass shootings.
The new effort — Teves describes it as a “quest for accountability” — is called No Notoriety, and the goal is to encourage and even shame the news media into withholding the names and pictures of mass killers. Teves and the other families hope their effort will break what they see as a feedback loop of media attention that inspires future killers.
“In the news, you report who, what and why,” Teves said. “But when the who and the what become the reason for the why, that’s a problem. And that’s what it’s come down to.”
Experts on criminal psychology are still learning about what motivates mass killers, and among those researchers there is not a consensus as to whether naming killers in the media inspires others.
Some support Teves’ effort, saying that too often mass killers become folk heroes to a small number of isolated individuals who are also contemplating violence. Others say withholding the name or other details about a killer would likely have little impact on the frequency of mass killings and that the overall tenor of the coverage is more important.
To media advocates, the push to withhold names conflicts with some of the core tenets of journalism: providing transparency in the criminal justice system and calling someone out when they’ve done wrong. The advocates worry that, by withholding the names, the media may unintentionally give more power to the killers in the minds of their followers.
“There’s a lot wrapped up in the psychology of whether you say someone’s name out loud,” said Kelly McBride, a vice president at The Poynter Institute and an expert in media ethics.
Monitoring publicity
Complicating all of this is an acknowledgment that media inspiration for mass killers is largely a blank spot in the research. No studies look directly at whether large-scale coverage of mass killers creates a “contagion” effect.
“It’s a more anecdotal or observational basis for my opinion than I’d like it to be,” said Dr. Park Dietz, a well-known forensic psychiatrist based in California who supports the effort to limit use of killers’ names and photos.
Still, Dietz and others see reasons to be concerned.
For instance, the man who murdered 26 students and staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary kept detailed notes about prior killings. And investigators studying new killings — such as the 2013 shooting at Arapahoe High School — continue to find perpetrators who are fascinated with the Columbine High School murderers. So worried were authorities about the potential for inspiration that the Jefferson County sheriff’s office decided in 2011 to destroy videos made by the Columbine killers, after a Federal Bureau of Investigation report described the videos as “like a recruitment tape.”
Several studies have concluded that some mass killers are motivated by infamy.
“The desire for notoriety is, ‘We want people to know why we’re angry,’ ” said Dr. Pete Blair of Texas State University’s Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training Center.
Blair said he is working on a study that examines whether well-publicized mass shootings increase the likelihood of new attacks. In the meantime, he has spearheaded a campaign called “Don’t Name Them” that has received support from FBI officials. Blair presents the campaign’s message at law enforcement training sessions — for instance, encouraging police officials to delay releasing a gunman’s name until after the first wave of publicity about the shooting.
“More than its share”
Other experts on criminal psychology, though, are skeptical about whether a name alone is enough to motivate mass murderers. Dr. James Alan Fox, a professor at Northeastern University in Boston and the author of the book “Extreme Killing,” said it is important for media coverage not to show fascination with killers or their beliefs. That would mean, for instance, not publishing manifestos by killers clearly seeking attention.
But, in the proper context, a name is just another factual detail of the case, he said.
“It’s OK to shed light on them and what they’ve done without giving them a spotlight,” Fox said.
In covering the Aurora movie theater shooting, The Denver Post has used James Holmes’ name but has deliberately kept it out of many stories focusing on victims of the tragedy. Prosecutors have so far not presented evidence that he was motivated by fame; his defense attorneys say he was insane at the time of the attack.
“Unfortunately, Colorado has had more than its share of pain from mass shootings,” Denver Post Editor Greg Moore said. “We understand the grief a community experiences and our role in helping it heal. We also understand our job is to cover the news factually, thoughtfully and with sensitivity. We have done that without bowing to outside pressures of any sort. Our readers can expect that same accurate, measured and sensitive coverage during this trial.”
McBride, the media advocate, said reporters must be thorough in their coverage of mass killings to fulfill their democratic responsibility, “to hold the light of scrutiny up to the justice system.”
Changing behaviors
Supporters of Teves’ campaign, though, say it is not unprecedented for the media to withhold names in certain circumstances.
Dietz encouraged reporters to think of mass killings not as murders but as something else: suicides. After several studies documented a connection between news reports and clusters of suicides, media outlets changed how they report on suicide. Dietz said many experts consider public mass killings to be a kind of suicidal behavior — and noted that more than half of perpetrators either kill themselves or are killed by police.
“All it takes to do this is feeling hopeless about one’s own future and blaming someone else for it,” Dietz said.
Though a few reporters have endorsed the No Notoriety message, Teves said he is baffled at the resistance of others. The name of the gunman who killed his son has been repeated so many times that it’s no longer newsworthy, Teves said. Even if withholding names doesn’t have an effect, he asked, what’s the harm in trying?
“Ninety-five percent of America agrees with us,” he said. “Four percent who don’t are journalists. And 1 percent are people who want to shoot people.”
“There’s no journalistic reason at this point to name this thing or show its picture.”
John Ingold: 303-954-1068, jingold@denverpost.com or twitter.com/johningold
