Is mainstream media making mass shootings worse?

The media went looking for solutions: What if we could keep guns out of the wrong hands, or get the right people medicated, or reform the police, or fix what’s plaguing angry young men?

These are all legitimate questions. But one question the media rarely ask is this: Is the press part of the problem? A growing body of research says yes.

“This is learned behavior and the media coverage is leading more people to learn it and to copy it,” says University of Alabama criminologist Adam Lankford, who has studied mass killers for more than a decade. “The more victims they kill, the more fame and attention they get. They’re being incentivized by the media coverage to be as destructive as possible.”

“There seems to be too much demand for fame in America,” Lankford writes in one paper, “and not enough supply.”