Image By: Steve Johnson

By now, there are few people who haven’t heard about the Connecticut elementary school shooting that occurred early this morning.

The event has sent waves of emotions throughout the Newtown community and the entire nation, especially with the Aurora movie theater shooting having occurred only a few months ago.

As new information continues to come in we find ourselves glued to our TVs and Internet browsers, asking how something like this could possibly happen. But maybe the real question is whether news outlets should devote such heavy coverage in the aftermath of these types of events.

After the Columbine High School massacre in 1999, film critic Roger Ebert said that school shootings are most likely influenced by past media coverage of similar incidents:

When an unbalanced kid walks into a school and starts shooting, it becomes a major media event. Cable news drops ordinary programming and goes around the clock with it. The message is clear to other disturbed kids around the country: If I shoot up my school, I can be famous. The TV will talk about nothing else but me. Experts will try to figure out what I was thinking. The kids and teachers at school will see they shouldn’t have messed with me. I’ll go out in blaze of glory.

Without media coverage, we would have no way of receiving updated information about these events. But do news outlets end up glorifying killers in their efforts to explain them?

Let us know in the comments below.