Adam Lanza. The name of the assailant who gunned down 20 children and six adults inside Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut last week has been all over the news.
And that's a serious problem, according to Morgan Freeman.
With the possibility of new gun control laws up for debate, the Oscar winner has released a statement in which he points the blame for these types of tragedies directly at CNN, Fox News and other media outlets.
Why did the Connecticut shooting take place?
"It's because of the way the media reports it," Freeman says. "Flip on the news and watch how we treat the Batman theater shooter and the Oregon mall shooter like celebrities.
"Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris are household names, but do you know the name of a single *victim* of Columbine? Disturbed people who would otherwise just off themselves in their basements see the news and want to top it by doing something worse, and going out in a memorable way.
"Why a grade school? Why children? Because he'll be remembered as a horrible monster, instead of a sad nobody."
Backing up this theory, it's believed that Lanza previewed his massacre online just days before it took place, teasing the murder/suicide on a forum like some sort of twisted movie.
Continues Morgan:
"CNN's article says that if the body count "holds up", this will rank as the second deadliest shooting behind Virginia Tech, as if statistics somehow make one shooting worse than another. Then they post a video interview of third-graders for all the details of what they saw and heard while the shootings were happening. Fox News has plastered the killer's face on all their reports for hours.
"Any articles or news stories yet that focus on the victims and ignore the killer's identity? None that I've seen yet. Because they don't sell. So congratulations, sensationalist media, you've just lit the fire for someone to top this and knock off a day care center or a maternity ward next.
"You can help by forgetting you ever read this man's name, and remembering the name of at least one victim. You can help by donating to mental health research instead of pointing to gun control as the problem. You can help by turning off the news."
What do you think of this take? Is the media to blame for the shooting?
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