Media and School Shootings
What, if anything can we learn from the Amish School Massacre?
Does the publics' need to know every detail of every school killing contribute to more violence? Has our voyeurism gone too far?
The comparisons between the recent school shootings in North America are obvious and profiled in the news daily. The details behind school shootings are debated in the media daily, ensuring that the massacres remain in the public eye long after the evil has been perpetrated.
Sadly this constant media attention guarantees copycat killings, but the publics' need for detail is insatiable and violence sells newspapers, so the cycle continues. To illustrate this point, studies show that following the terrorist attacks perpetrated against the United States on 911, school violence was virtually ignored for almost a year in the media and the result was an enormous decrease in school shootings.
The similarities between the slaughter of the Amish school children and those in Columbine and other campuses have been examined and re-examined over the past few weeks, but the differences are glaring. Today, I’d like to talk about what those differences are, because it is from those that we can learn.
Firstly, the Amish community refused to make their grief a national television event. During the funerals of their young people, all the roads leading into their town were closed to anyone but residents. The airspace was closed and television crews were banned from filming their pain.
Secondly, the Amish did not call for revenge. Instead, in an incredible show of courage and humility, they spoke of forgiveness for 32-year-old Charles Carl Roberts, a milk truck driver known to many in the community. They extended their sympathies to his wife and three children, going so far as to invite them to the funerals of their children.
It is much easier to hate those who hurt us, and almost impossible not to despise those who hurt our children. It is easy to understand why crime victims adopt the adage “an eye for an eye,” but it is almost impossible to understand how a community who has been so terribly preyed upon can “turn the other cheek.”
The details of the last hours of Charles Carl Roberts will fulfill our morbid curiosity, but the lessons we can learn from the actions of the people in the community of Nickel Mines will teach us much more, if only we can listen.
