The Copycat Effect — from the Public Entity Risk Institute (PERI)
By Loren Coleman, MSW
Today’s frenzied style of news coverage with its wall-to-wall "live news," "breaking news," and "continuing coverage" has become a modern form of entertainment. The newsroom’s addiction for its own "reality programming" is a relatively recent phenomenon. It all began with CNN, the first news-only network on television, which has been around since 1980. Under Ted Turner’s leadership, CNN was a groundbreaking idea, but it soon became "traditional" in terms of its low-impact, factual reportage of the news. By the mid-1990s, other news services began to promote an even more graphic "breaking news" style that led to today’s MSNBC, Fox News, and other "news" networks. Fox News Network is a babe in these woods, evolving from the news department at Fox TV at the end of the 1996 elections. Everyone is now forced to compete for the latest, breaking horror story. The modern world has given the media just what it wants most.
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COLUMBINE
Then the nightmare of April 1999 occurred.
On April 20, 1999, Eric Harris, 18, and Dylan Klebold, 17, killed one teacher and 12 students and wounded 23 others at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. Focusing their attack on the cafeteria, Harris and Klebold spoke German and worn trench coats, as they reenacted scenes from Matrix and The Basketball Diaries in the nation's deadliest school shooting. They had plotted for a year to kill at least 500 and blow up their school. At the end of their hour-long rampage, they turned their guns on themselves.
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In the wake of the shootings in Littleton, the nation’s schools were under attack by copycats. Some 400 related incidents were reported in the month following the killings. "Across the nation after the 1999 Columbine tragedy," noted Court TV’s Katherine Ramsland, "other kids called in bomb threats, wore trench coats to school, or used the Internet to praise what Klebold and Harris had done. Only ten days later, on April 30, people feared the eruption of some major event because that day marked Hitler’s suicide in 1945. Schools in Arizona, New Jersey, Michigan, North Carolina, and DC closed to investigate potential threats. It wasn't Paducah, or Jonesboro, or Springfield that they wanted to imitate; the mantra was ‘Columbine.’"
http://www.policeone.com/news/1208153-The-Copycat-Effect-from-the-Public-Entity-Risk-Institute-PERI/
This article is long and detailed but is a worthwhile read.
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