Charlie Brooker's Newswipe 25/03/09

No Unicorns3 HN recommenders · 2012–2023
3.7M views · commentary · evergreen · Uploaded 2009-03-26

A clip from Charlie Brooker's Newswipe in which a forensic psychiatrist argues that intense news coverage of school shooters encourages copycat attacks, alongside Brooker's satire of formulaic news reporting.

HN cites it in discussions about how media should report mass shootings, as an expert-backed argument for not glorifying perpetrators.

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14 comments from Hacker News

@swang2012 · in “Accused Movie Killer James Holmes 'Refused to Program in an Object-Oriented Way'”

I want to share this video from Charlie Booker. [VIDEO] Basically at the end the forensic psychiatrist says that giving this intense superficial coverage about the gunman only encourages more copycat killers. I don't know what compelled me to click the link even after watching the video and telling myself to stop following more coverage, but that may be all the more reason why it needs to stop. I honestly don't care what his intentions are, and I think the biggest punishment to him would be if everyone just forgot his name and he be left to pass the rest of his life in jail sitting in relative obscurity.

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@wlll2012 · in “Mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut”

Option 3. Prevent widespread news coverage: [VIDEO] Though that seems about as likely as "1.Disarm everyone".

@losethos2013 · in “Razer will not cancel 90%-off test coupons”

In 9th grade when I moved to Goodyear, I was a year ahead in Math, so they put me one the 10-12 grade campus, taking all year ahead classes. I took Calculus my junior year. I did not have credit hours to graduate high school in 3 years, so I just exhausted free high school classes. I took short hand, accounting and electronic becausew I had already taken physics my junior year. Free courses. Then, I had a full scholarship to ASU -- all my tuition and a merit scholarship for having a 1440 SAT. I also had a Unidynamics scholarship. I gopt a master's in electrical engineering. We mocked psychology and business students. [LINK] Are we having fun yet? God says... 21:20 And Ahab said to Elijah, Hast thou found me, O mine enemy? And he answered, I have found thee: because thou hast sold thyself to work evil in the sight of the LORD. 21:21 Behold, I will bring evil upon thee, and will take away thy posterity, and will cut off from Ahab him that pisseth against the wall, and him that is shut up and left in Israel, 21:22 And will make thine house like the house of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, and like the house of Baasha the son of Ahijah, for the provocation wherewith thou hast provoked me to anger, and made Israel to sin. 21:23 And of Jezebel also spake the LORD, saying, The dogs shall eat Jezebel by the wall of Jezreel. 21:24 Him that dieth of Ahab in the city the dogs shall eat; and him that dieth in the field shall the fowls of the air eat. 21:25 But there was none like unto Ahab, w

@chestnut-tree2013 · in “News is bad for you”

I'm from the UK and I'd go so far as to say the majority of the British press are toxic. They have an incredibly inflated view of themselves and they couldn't care less about what's in the public interest (just look at how they've responded to the recommendations of the Leveson Inquiry which investigated the repulsive ethics and culture of the British press). The UK press empahtically follow their own self-interests and agendas (and that includes broadsheets like The Guardian). There will always be individual reporters who rise above the abysmally low standard of reporting - but they are a tiny minority. TV news is better in my opinion - they at least aspire to some measure of impartiality. These clips from Charlie Brooker (British TV presenter) give a good sense of the formulaic way news is reported (strong language in the videos). [LINK] [VIDEO]

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@ixwt2014 · in “Suicide Contagion and the Reporting of Suicide (1994)”

Most people don't. This seems to be quite prevalent in most societies. News media doing anything to get a story to grab viewers. Another example is school shootings: [VIDEO]

@cuberator2015 · in “On the manifestos killers leave behind”

Very well written and interesting. While some people put the blame on firearms (lets not turn this into a debate on gun control) i believe that its the media attention that is the biggest culprit. [VIDEO]

@Terr_2015 · in “Show HN: Don't Name the Shooter”

> I get the "sexinesss" of denying the person the attention they wanted, but it doesn't help society. I think you have it totally backwards. If anything, it's "sexy" for news agencies to barf out everything they can know or speculate about the person. It lets them grab eyeballs, ratings, and fill airtime and pages. In contrast, removing the "notoriety payoff" is the sober , serious , and "wise" approach for society. There's a huge correlation between media-obsession after a shooting-tragedy and another attack occurring soon afterwards. [0] > We need to delve No, "we", the media-consuming audience, emphatically do NOT need to do any delving. 99.9% of us will never have expertise, and even if we did would be unable to act upon it. The people who do (sociologists, psychologists, etc.) are going to be able to get at the data anyway, they don't need to get their primary research from the 24-hour flashing-klaxon news-blast. [0] [VIDEO]

@whitegrape2016 · in “How Silicon Valley is dealing with mental illness”

This is mostly true, but I don't think the evidence is there for videogames. What you might find evidence for w.r.t videogames is that they'll change your behavioral responses under stress, for example having played many shooter games, and given a real gun, then put in a stressful situation, you're more likely to pull the trigger on another human than otherwise. For mass shooting, absolutely true: [VIDEO] (Skip to 1:30 if you want an argument from authority.) I suspect it's true for suicides as well. People underestimate copycat / monkey-see-monkey-do influences.

@bargl2016 · in “Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week”

I empathize with your view, but I very much disagree with you. 1) It's an experiment, there should never be any disagreement with an experiment unless the experiment itself can cause harm to someone/something. The results of this experiment should be evaluated closely, and if they make new guidelines for HN I'm fully onboard. But it's an experiment. 2) The person who shot the gun did not read HN, I may be wrong but I feel this is a fair assumption. I'm not saying no one here could shoot a gun in public, but they wouldn't come here as anything but a complete troll and shoot a gun based on some crap story like that. If I'm wrong in this then the experiment is terrible and stop it now. But I very much doubt it. 3) The issue is that news in general has degraded. This degradation of journalism has led to many of the issues we experience today. If experimenting on HN can lead to some sort of anecdotal evidence that Politics = bad for communities I'm all for it. I believe part of the issue is pointed to in this video. [VIDEO] 24 Hours news is the issue. 24 Hours politics is the issue. Taking a purge is a great idea. 4) HN should not be where you get your news about politics.

@nabla92019 · in “Facebook, YouTube Blindsided by Mosque Shooter's Live Video”

For the same reason they remove porn. You can still enjoy the murder porn by watching 24/7 hour endless media masturbation. How to report mass murders - Charlie Brooker [VIDEO]

@finnthehuman2019 · in “US newspapers run more photos of school shooting suspects than victims (2018)”

Showing victims vs suspects is a con. It's not a secret how to responsibly cover shootings in the news, and hasn't been for 30 years. [VIDEO]

@mhh__2019 · in “Terminating Service for 8Chan”

> you signal a green light to all the other potential shooters that this is how you get attention. As pointed out by an ever prescient Charlie Brooker almost ten fucking years ago. ( [VIDEO] ). On a similar subject, The Samaritans publish very specific and thorough guidelines as to how to report and publish suicides ( [LINK] ) which are still ignored by many even if unknowingly.

@Zhyl2022 · in “Murder-Suicides by Pilots Are Vexing Airlines as Deaths Mount”

This kind of thing always makes me think of the well-known Charlie Brooker (creator of Black Mirror) clip: [VIDEO]

@chx2023 · in “Charlie Brooker Got ChatGPT to Write a Black Mirror Episode”

Charlie Brooker is fantastic: On how news is reported [LINK] On how mass shooting is reported and about the saturation [VIDEO]

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