Sympathetic #NoNotoriety has a downside: Our view

On a trip to Hawaii in 2012, Tom and Caren Teves got the call all parents dread. Their son, Alex, had been wounded in a movie theater mass shooting in Aurora, Colo. They turned on the TV but in the next gut-wrenching hours, despite saturation coverage, they heard nothing about Alex’s fate.  “All we kept seeing was the shooter, the shooter, the shooter,” Caren Teves recalls.

Alex, 24, was among the 12 people killed, and since then the Teves have worked to change the way mass shootings are covered. Their advocacy group, No Notoriety, challenges news organizations to limit the use of a shooter’s name and photos and to refrain from publicizing his manifestos or videos. Several TV reporters have jumped on board, including CNN's Anderson Cooper and Fox News' Megyn Kelly.

Don’t give killers what they want: Opposing view

Voluntary efforts by individual news organizations to avoid glorifying mass murderers are reasonable ways to deny attention to people deranged enough to seek it with guns. Such steps are compassionate gestures to victims' families and, according to experts, might even help prevent future carnage.

But the No Notoriety movement and its offspring could do more harm than good if they give public officials an excuse to withhold information, impede investigative reporting on what makes killers tick, or provide the gun lobby with a way to point fingers at the news media in an effort to deflect pressure for common-sense laws.

There's no question that mass killers study their predecessors and crave similar notoriety. In a recent study, Arizona State University researchers found “significant evidence that mass killings involving firearms are” contagious.

Oregon shooter Chris Mercer-Harper proved the point, writing in a blog post attributed to him about the gunman who shot two journalists on live TV in Roanoke, Va. “A man who was known by no one, is now known by everyone. … Seems the more people you kill, the more you're in the limelight." The Roanoke killer, in turn, wrote that he was influenced by the racist gunman who killed nine worshipers in Charleston, S.C., in June and wanted to start a race war.

Even so, preventing the contagion is not as simple as refraining from repeating a name, airing a photo or publishing a manifesto.  Forensic psychiatrist Park Dietz has argued since the 1980s that the problem is cable TV’s “saturation coverage” with its electronic images, color, bleeding bodies and screaming sirens:  “Those are the emotionally arousing aspects” to someone “already alienated from society, blaming some group for his failures, depressed and suicidal who can gain access to weapons.”

Some joining #NoNotoriety or similar campaigns forget that last vital point: access to weapons. Grasping at any way to stop what has become almost routine violence, some are shifting blame to the messenger. “Next mass shooting — you are morally complicit,” Rich Orman, one of the prosecutors in the Aurora shooting case, tweeted to a USA TODAY reporter about naming the Oregon shooter.

Perhaps people forget the value of the news media's deep dives into the minds, acts and histories of mass killers. Publishing the Unabomber’s manifesto in 1995 helped lead to his capture when the bomber's brother recognized the style of the prose. Investigations into the lives of the Virginia Tech and Charleston shooters uncovered holes in the nation’s gun laws and mental health databases.

Last Thursday, Douglas County Sheriff John Hanlin refused to say the Oregon killer's name on camera. OK. By then it was already out. But what if officials use this movement as an excuse to thwart the public's right to know? What if the idea of not being named becomes somehow alluring to a mentally disturbed mind, as with Harry Potter’s villainous Lord Voldemort, known as He Who Must Not Be Named?

The biggest downside of No Notoriety, despite the valid goals of its founders, is if it prompts news organizations to forget the essence of their job: finding facts and reporting them, without fear or favor. Once the news media get caught up in the potential consequences, it will infect everything they cover.

It’s laudable for individual news organizations to make subjective decisions to tone down coverage, to refrain from repeating a name ad nauseam or to focus more on the victims — so long as voluntary restraint doesn't cross the line into censorship.

USA TODAY's editorial opinions are decided by its Editorial Board, separate from the news staff. Most editorials are coupled with an opposing view — a unique USA TODAY feature.

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