CMV: The media should stop covering the Germanwings tragedy immediately

I have to just guess; you are like 15 years old?

I understand your immature argument, it's a typical one. But that is a logical fallacy called "slippery slope". Just because we stop covering a HIGHLY specific type of news in a SPECIFIC way, does not mean we should censor other news.

But we know A LOT about the inner workings of suicidal people and homicidal people. Especially people who suicide in spectacular fashion.

As explained here:

There is a lot of peer-reviewed scientific data establishing a link between media coverage of suicides and increased suicide rates. Through a process called modeling, some people who observe another person’s actions (including on TV or in a newspaper) will seek to emulate them. “The more characteristics you make available for modeling, the more likely that modeling will occur,” Jill Harkavy-Friedman, vice president of research for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, told me recently.

“If you talk about it, that’s one thing,” she said. “But if you actually show it with multimedia, then that increases the likelihood of modeling in ways that are consistent with the original behavior.”

When it comes to suicide, Harkavy-Friedman explained, there are two related and proven dynamics at work, both based on modeling behavior: copycat suicide (someone committing suicide in the same manner as someone else’s publicized suicide) and contagion (a pattern of several suicides occurring closely in time, and typically location, often including copycats).

Research has linked suicide contagion to media coverage. In Austria, for example, two studies found that after a campaign to encourage less dramatic media coverage of subway suicides, subway suicide attempts dropped by 80 percent over six months. “Suicide and attempted suicide should in general never be given any mention,” declared the Norwegian Press Association in its 1994 Code of Ethics.

source: http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/does-media-coverage-of-school-shootings-lead-to-more-school-shootings/Content?oid=20329038

/r/changemyview Thread Parent