Should the national news report on tragedies such as Columbine, or does it give other people ideas to copy?

There are a number of problems with news; specifically it is bias in what is covered and how it is delivered. National tragedies are not reported out of a sense of duty; they are reported because they will get ratings, which mean that people want to know these types of things.

As for copycat crimes, people don’t just see a news story and suddenly have violent impulses to copy cat a crime unless they are already planning to do something anyway.

The news no doubt affects both how people feel and what they think. Most people take the news as being the whole and absolute truth, which it is not. I don’t think that the news really performs a public service, if it did, we would hear all sides of each story, unedited, etc. What I think we need is more honest coverage of what is happening in the world. What we currently get is what those people who are funding the television stations what to relay. I have heard accounts of an event from people from different countries that was very different from the way in which the event was portrayed to the American public. I would assume that the same type thing happens with national news.