By Mona Oliver

Question.

The news media hype mass murders like sports. They generate excitement using continuous coverage, announcer-like intensity and narratives, names and backgrounds of “contestants,” manisfestos and quotes, play by plays, tactics and gear, video and photos, comparisons with other contestants, and scores. Regardless of intention, the news media are strongly encouraging copycats.

But it doesn’t stop there. The news media then use the carnage as propaganda to push an agenda — to disarm the population at large — which would result in millions of defenseless law-abiding citizens everywhere at the mercy of an infinitesimal percentage who desire to be their mass-murderers. Again, regardless of intentions, the news media are pushing for broader playing fields with more targets, higher scores, and greater notoriety for mass murderers.

(At this point, it’s worth remembering that the greatest mass murderers are governments, a risk that increases dramatically with civilian disarmament.)

There is hope. A few countries have seen the light. They have directed their news media to change their coverage of mass murders — and their news media have complied, with minimal coverage, non-hyped language, no emphasis on the perpetrators, just a presenting of facts about the event and moving on. In those countries, mass murders have dropped to zero or nearly zero.

In the US, our news media is only getting worse. Hearing such intense, ongoing, sports-like coverage of the latest horrific events is not just personally sickening, it is quite literally sickening our country. It is doing nothing to help alleviate the problem and may, in fact, be escalating conditions.

We have to demand better. We have to demand a similar change from our news agencies — but without usurping the 1st Amendment.

The question is, how do we achieve that?