On 28 April, the president of the American Psychiatric Association, Pedro Ruiz, did what many of its members wish he had done earlier. He wrote an open letter to the news media asking editors to stop airing photos, video clips and writings of Cho Seung-hui, the student who killed 32 people and then himself at the Virginia Tech campus on 16 April. Ruiz warned that the publicity would inspire copycat suicides and killings.
Sounds far-fetched? It isn鈥檛. There is compelling evidence that extensive media coverage of a suicide is followed by an increase in the number of people taking their lives the same way. This pattern has been observed across the world. In a report released in 2000, the World Health Organization warned that repeated coverage of suicides tends to encourage suicidal preoccupations, particularly among young people.
What especially concerns the APA is that the effect applies equally to suicides that are preceded by mass murder. In the months after teenagers Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris killed a teacher, 12 students and themselves at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, in April 1999, police received reports of hundreds of related incidents, including bomb threats and shootings. Students mimicked the killers鈥� behaviour and style of dress, and praised them on the internet.
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Cho himself invoked the Columbine killers before his murder spree, hailing them as 鈥渕artyrs鈥� in the video he sent to the NBC television network. Loren Coleman, who researches suicides and school violence and has written on 鈥渟uicide contagion鈥� in his 2003 book The Copycat Effect and elsewhere, claims the unrestrained media coverage of the Virginia Tech killings has made a repeat incident very likely. 鈥淧ublicity about a celebrity murder and murder-suicide serves as the spark to send a vulnerable, questioning, suicidal person in one of many directions,鈥� he says.
鈥淯nrestrained media coverage of the Virginia Tech killings has made a repeat incident likely鈥�
The APA president in his letter said the media has a responsibility to limit the power of tragedies to trigger copycat acts by 鈥渃hoosing not to sensationalise them鈥�. He has a battle on his hands. Attempts to limit freedom to publish on such matters tend to be shouted down, mainly by the press itself, as undemocratic or dangerous. Yet with suicides and violence, it is clear that the media can have a dangerous effect on behaviour. To publish or broadcast unrestrainedly in the face of such strong scientific evidence now seems reckless. Even pictures like the one of Cho published in 快猫短视频 may be ill advised.
This is not the only area in which it may be in the public interest for the press to exercise restraint in times of tension. Unpublished studies by a team at the University of Sussex in the UK show that news reports of 鈥淚slamic terrorists鈥� tend to promote prejudice not only against Arabs but against minority groups in general.
Tom Pyszczynski at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, has found that attitudes towards extreme solutions 鈥� such as using excessive force against an enemy 鈥� are easily influenced by public debate. Iranian students stopped supporting suicide attacks against the US once they believed public opinion was against the tactic, and Americans who favoured strong military force against their 鈥渆nemies鈥� softened their attitudes when shown pictures of families from different countries or when reminded of what they shared with others (快猫短视频, 14 April, p 42). 鈥淚nformation in the media affects the kinds of thoughts that come to mind, which in turn affect attitudes and behaviour,鈥� he says.
Are newspaper and broadcast editors taking these lessons on board? The behaviour of the NBC network, which broadcast much of Cho鈥檚 鈥渕artyrdom鈥� video, does not bode well. NBC has agreed to limit its use of the video to 10 per cent of its airtime, a decision the APA says demonstrates 鈥渁 lack of understanding鈥� of its potential impact. It is not just the media that should be held to account. Given the long list of psychologists and sociologists who declared themselves available to journalists for comment on the Virginia Tech murders, it seems that parts of the science community are also in denial.
Of course, even if mainstream media exercise restraint, determined people will still find details of suicides and killings online. But the level of exposure does matter: there is evidence that the number of copycat suicides is proportional to the amount of media coverage they get (Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, vol 35, p 251).
What is the solution? Legislation would be strongly resisted and hard to make work. Instead, the media should regulate itself. Ethical guidelines already exist, so why not extend them? For example, never broadcast a killer鈥檚 parting message; report suicides only when it鈥檚 strongly in the public interest; in times of conflict or social tension, accentuate commonalities between rival groups rather than differences. Some people may feel uncomfortable with the idea of the media manipulating opinion in this way, but consider what we now know: editors can reduce or increase the likelihood of mass murders, and encourage a nation to war or peace. Given such power, it is surely not too much to ask that they tread lightly.