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Comment by robonerd | Hacker News Reader

> Fatal crashes of private, business, and corporate-executive airplanes have increased after publicized murder-suicides. The more publicity given to a murder-suicide, the more crashes occurred. The increase in plane crashes occurred primarily in states where the murder-suicides were publicized. These findings suggest that murder-suicide stories trigger subsequent murder-suicides, some of which are disguised as airplane accidents.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17750236/

The media has known about their role in inducing murder-suicides by reporting on them for decades, but they keep doing it.

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PezlFNTGWv4

As every evil act gets blasted worldwide instantaneously, one has to think that we as a culture need to put an end to publicizing the name/photo of the attacker. It's been proven enough times that it empowers others to do the same, for the fame and recognition of the "nobody".

There's already a voluntary ban on reporting suicides because of the copycat effect. That it hasn't been extended to murder-for-attention is reprehensible.

I still remember this alleged quote from Germanwings co-pilot:

>According to the German newspaper Bild, a former girlfriend of Lubitz, identified only as Mary W, said he had told her last year: “One day I will do something that will change the whole system, and then all will know my name and remember it.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/27/germanwings-co...

Some media organizations already do that, typically for school shootings or "homegrown terrorists".

I don't know what the right answer for the media outlets is here; if they didn't report on things like this, the contingent that are constantly shouting that "the main-stream media is hiding the truth from you" would get louder and have another bit of real evidence to underpin their conspiracy theories.

I suppose that they could have something like the "some asshole" initiative[0], where they can report that a thing happened, and provide historical perspective and statistical analysis, but without identifying who carried out the attack, or what their motives were, or even who the victim(s) were other than "a fortune 500 CEO", or "a regional business owner".

They wouldn't be hiding any information. They'd still be reporting that the thing happened. A record of who died is still going to be available in the obituaries, or public FAA reports. The media just don't have to publicise the specific details that tend to inspire copycats.

...but they'd get fewer clicks/views, so it'll never happen :-(

[0] http://nonadventures.com/2015/06/20/the-some-of-all-fears/

Given the choice between more deaths and noisier crazies, well, you don't have to listen to the crazies. Except when they get elected, I suppose.

I like how you jump directly to crazy from gp's "contigent of people saying the media is hiding the truth". Do you see how your response is part of the problem? Instead of addressing issues brought up, its just a label slap and then dismissal. Yeah there are real crazies who also say those things, but they are dwarfed by the amount of normal people who don't trust media and with many good reasons.

I have a feeling it was the mention of "conspiracy theories" having a modern intellectual connotation of ridiculous, but its a shame because conspiracy is a legal term and it happens all the time, and there is a lot of good analysis left on the chopping block due to mere association with similar sounding phrases and conspiracy theorists being enough to shut down thought on the matter.

>contigent of people saying the media is hiding the truth

Go start a media organisation, publish, go on social media, bring the truth to the people. Nobody will stop you. That's all just tosh. When I was a teenager here in the UK I used to be able to buy the English edition of Pravda in my local newsagents. In fact you can read the latest edition right now [0], thought it's a lot less risible these days.

Yes news organisations often have an agenda, but they're all different agendas and doing a complete end run around them has never been easier. Don't trust them. Do your own thing. The whole hiding the truth meme isn't even CS bull anymore, it's just stupid. The free world is awash with every conceivable opinion.

[0] https://english.pravda.ru/

None of that negates the truth that the media that has the most minds in it's capture hides the truth more often than not. Yes, the internet is a last bastion of anarchistic freedom of thought, which is why it also is under fierce attack by the oligarchs. There are a handful of true journalists and truth tellers on the internet, and their truth no matter how powerful generally gets shutdown and prevented from reaching the minds of others. On top of that recently there have been moves to regulate speech against the principles of freedom of speech. The very purveyors of disinfo are now claiming a right to govern disinfo. Alarm bells should be going off for everyone.

Class war is at play, and the non-.001% are losing.

Or maybe. Just maybe, the vast majority of people don’t see it that way, and genuinely don’t care about and don’t want to read or hear about the kind of fringe stuff you think is being ‘suppressed’.

> The media has known about their role in inducing murder-suicides by reporting on them for decades, but they keep doing it.

The media probably induced the whole school shooting epidemic, with the massive attention paid to Columbine and the Columbine shooters.

The people have a right to know!

You can't solve a problem if no one is willing to vocalize and point out that there is one. Societal meta-awareness is a necessary pre-condition of change.

To be honest, I'm surprised there are not more Pilot death-by-suicides seeing as being able to fly is one of the most tightly and mercilessly regulated past times. Nevermind being able to make a living off it. For those for whom the wings are life, I can totally understand how having that jeopardized by a regulatory apparatus, and having the industrial apparatus that makes your living possible be hell bent on minimizing the number of you, could lead to a psychologically fraught population of specialists.

What'd be interesting is a study of whether the occupation has a markedly higher rate than say... Shipping/sailing, bus driving, or train operation. I just wonder if there may be a sub-correlation there with habitually being the Jesus Nut for massive numbers of people on a regular basis.

> You can't solve a problem if no one is willing to vocalize and point out that there is one. Societal meta-awareness is a necessary pre-condition of change.

I am reticent to discuss this matter at all since I doubt even delicate nuanced public discussion can help. But if you have data showing that public discussion about murder-suicides can reduce their incidence rate, I'd like to see it. As far as I can tell, public discussion makes it worse, but it's hard to warn people away from discussing it without yourself discussing it. Is it ethical for me to warn people away from discussing murder-suicides, if doing so necessarily means that I am discussing them? I'm not sure.

It should be a matter discussed privately among journalists. From what I understand, it is discussed in journalism schools but when push comes to shove they just don't care. If it bleeds, it leads.

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