Letter: Media shouldn’t lavish attention on killers

Tuesday, Dec. 18, 2007 | 7:08 a.m.

Shakespeare was right, "All the world's a stage," and we all want our 30 minutes on it. It used to be, though, that thespians who eventually achieved marquee status earned their fame one bit part at a time.

Nowadays, however, when the notoriety of infamous behavior is given the same top billing as earned fame, extreme wannabes opt to gain their stage time through acts of mass murder. Listen to the prediction of Nebraska's megamurderer, Robert Hawkins: "Now, I will be famous."

Attention is what these killers want - and attention they get. In a fit of paparazzi pandemonium, reporters converge on the crime scene and, just like that, the wannabes are given omnipresence on the front page and on the TV screen.

The Columbine High School and Virginia Tech massacres were attention-killings. The murderers expected the media to become their historians and produce newsreels showcasing every aspect of their lives. Indeed, every detail about them - their lifestyle, their dress, their affects, their thoughts and their macabre, self-starring videos - is deemed rerun-worthy and aired over and over.

I believe that, were the media to subject attention-killers to the same anonymity to which it subjects the killers' victims, murderers who kill for media face-time might be less inclined to perform such ferocious acts of life-taking carnage.

Orlis Trone, Fernley