NRA TV host Colion Noir produced a new video calling for “common sense media control” that is causing a stir. But many sounding the alarm over it either failed to watch the whole video or failed to get the point.
Noir begins by underscoring the role fame plays in inspiring mass shootings (video below). “Can anyone tell me the last time a mass school shooter left a manifesto, a comment on social media, or a video where they said they were inspired to commit their atrocity because of a firearm?” he asks. “Name one. I’m sure you can’t, and neither can I. Because as much as the media love to pivot the conversation after a mass school shooting to gun control, the pen is still mightier than the sword.
“These kids aren’t being inspired by inert hunk of plastic and metal lying on a table,” he continues. “They’re inspired by the infamous glory of past shooters, who they relate to. And no entity on the planet does a better job, whether directly or indirectly, of glorifying these killers and thereby providing the inspiration for the next one.”
After highlighting some of the wall-to-wall media coverage of mass shootings, Noir gets to what appears to be his point: “It’s time to put an end to this glorification of carnage in pursuit of ratings, because it is killing our kids. It’s time for Congress to step up and pass legislation putting common sense limitations on our mainstream media’s ability to report on these school shootings.”
“There’s no need to cover these shootings for two weeks straight plastering the kids’ face over and over and over again,” he says. “Pass a law stopping the media from reporting the killer’s name or showing his face. You can still report on the shootings. … We just need reasonable laws that place limitations on the glory and fame you give to these killers and their twisted motivations.”
For those who stopped watching at this point, Noir’s conservative credentials are officially in flames, but after a brief break in the video, he returns to lay out his real, fully conservative arguments about defending constitutional rights and the way the media can voluntarily find ways to avoid glorifying mass shooters.
“You know that feeling of anxiety that shot through your body when I said the government should pass laws to limit the media’s ability to exercise their First Amendment right,” said Noir. “That’s the same feeling gun owners get when they hear people say the same thing about the Second Amendment.”
He goes on to explain that the does “honestly believe ignoring shooters and not giving them any attention will do more to stop school shootings than any gun control measure ever will,” but he stresses that, of course, curbing a fundamental constitutional right to meet that end is out of the question. “I vehemently disagree with the government infringing on the media’s First Amendment rights the same way I don’t believe the government should infringe on anyone’s Second Amendment rights,” he says.
WATCH:
Noir’s overarching argument that many mass shooters are inspired by the glorification of previous shooters has been repeatedly demonstrated to be true. In Ben Shapiro’s explanation of why The Daily Wire would no longer publish the names of mass shooters, Shapiro cites a 2016 study addressing the role of the media in promoting mass shootings:
As Professor Jennifer Johnston and Andrew Joy of Western New Mexico University found in a paper presented to the American Psychological Association’s annual convention in 2016, “media contagion” can help make mass shootings more common. “Unfortunately,” said Johnston, “we find that a cross-cutting trait among many profiles of mass shooters is desire for fame.” The rise of such a trait in mass shooters, she claimed, rose “in correspondence to the emergence of widespread 24-hours news coverage on cable news programs, and the rise of the internet during the same period.” Johnston recommended a media pact to “no longer share, reproduce, or retweet the names, faces, detailed histories or long-winded statements of killers, we could see a dramatic reduction in mass shootings in one to two years.”
While other studies do not make such a dramatic statistic prediction, they do support similar conclusions.
Read Shapiro’s full statement here.
Related: Alyssa Milano Posts Racially Charged Tweet About NRA. NRA’s Colion Noir Responds.