DAVE KOPEL WRITES ON SCHOOL SHOOTINGS AND PRESS-INSPIRED COPYCATS:

Copycat violence from media sensationalism dates back at least to 1888, when Jack the Ripper mutilated and murdered five prostitutes in London. Improvements in printing technology, such as typesetting machines, had led to the creation of low-cost, mass-market daily newspapers – “the penny press” – which thrived on lurid crime reporting. The immense publicity given to Jack the Ripper led to many copycat murders and rapes.

Although Coleman does not explicitly say so, his evidence suggests that a Chinese-style system of strict and comprehensive censorship would deprive would-be copycats of inspiration.

However, censoring the American media to prevent school shootings runs into the same problem as banning guns in order to prevent school shootings. An effective gun ban – including confiscation of the more than 200 million guns currently in private hands – would drastically reduce mass murders at schools, since there are no other weapons which are so easy to use and which allow one person to control a crowd at a distance. But it is unrealistic to believe that a gun ban would actually prevent guns from being plentiful on the black market, just as legally prohibited drugs such as marijuana, cocaine and heroin are plentifully supplied on a black market that even a high school student can reach.

Similarly, it is difficult to believe that an official system of censorship in the U.S. could prevent the informal spread of news about school shootings – especially in an era when everyone has cell phones and e-mail. Moreover, official censorship would inadvertently give credibility to false rumors and hoaxes about shootings. (Of course there would also be insurmountable constitutional problems with censorship or gun bans.) . . .Because of the First Amendment, it is up to the media themselves, and not government, to search for ways to reduce the media’s role the vicious cycle of copycat murders and suicides. But the evidence produced by Cramer and Coleman suggests that it is long past time for the media to begin the necessary self-examination.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: Here’s the article Kopel refers to, in the Journal of Mass Media Ethics.