The Relationship between the Media and School Shootings
affected the Sandy Hook massacre, and how it had more of a negative effect because of the growing number of false profiles created to provoke hate. Then, I will compare and contrast print and broadcast media and demonstrate that the broadcast media has a greater impact on more people. Following my analysis of the impact of broadcast media, I will look at journalists’ psychological responses when working in traumatic environments like school shootings. Next, I will examine how media outlets present stories to their target audiences to garner a desired response, which gains the attention of legislators. Finally, I will assess the journalist code of ethics and explain why the journalists did not breach ethics when interviewing victims. I will also provide a solid argument as to why the code of ethics needs to be revised. Many media platforms exist in today’s technological age. Through social-networking sites, print newspapers and magazines, and broadcast news, each medium influenced responses to each shooting. In the instance of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, social media played a bigger role in garnering responses from the general public. Social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook experience high traffic during tragic events. Obviously, one of the main reasons that the Newtown massacre gained so much attention on Twitter and Facebook and Columbine and Virginia Tech did not is because in 1999 and 2007 social media was not as prevalent. The invention of smartphones has made social networking more accessible to everyone because the internet is at the tip of everyone’s finger. In a 2011 survey completed by the Pew Research Center, forty-two percent of all Americans who had a cell phone owned a smartphone.1 One third of Americans have the ability to use the internet at almost any moment in the day with the use of their cell phones. The availability of the internet, which makes social networking sites more accessible, allows people to post, view, and/or link news stories to their pages. Therefore, the Sandy Hook massacre had more of an 1. MacManus, Christopher. "Pew: One-third of U.S. Adults Own Smartphones." CNET News. CBS Interactive, 11 (July 2011). Web. (accessed January 9, 2013).
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