Same Old Shooting Script
Mass shootings seem to unfold with tragic slowness. But we’ve had enough of them to know the script. (Full disclosure: I helped manage communications and wrote statements on two separate shooting crises for corporate clients.)
- The scattered, chaotic bulletins full of incomplete and incorrect information.
- The agonizingly police response, almost always too late.
- The rising death toll updated like a scoreboard
- Statements and an information page posted by the institution in crisis.
- Prayers and posts against gun control, violent videogames, psychiatric drugs, etc.
- The announcement that the shooter is dead, almost always by his own hand.
- The media frenzy to get the name, then track down a biography and those who knew the shooter, inevitably a ‘loner.’
- Expressions of sorrow from high officials.
- Officials are praised.
- Officals are blamed.
- The media searches for heroes amidst the devastation.
- The memorial process begins; cameras cut away from the awful weeping.
- The recriminations (including those against the intrusive media) and lawsuits begin.
- The next shooting will reference the last.
Can’t we change the script?