The news media should stop covering school shootings.
If the news media stops covering school shootings, people will think school shootings have stopped happening. Problem solved.
You might be thinking that if someone shoots a bunch of people in a school and the news media doesn’t talk about it, the shooting still occurred. You’re right, but a good chunk of the population in the United States doesn’t believe something happened unless the news media tells them it happened.
I will give you two examples that involve shootings. The first is police shooting unarmed people. Many Americans think the police shoot only unarmed African-Americans because those are the only shootings the news media covers. If you tell these people the police also shoot unarmed white people, they’ll think you’re crazy.
The second example is armed people stopping crimes. Many Americans think armed people don’t stop attempted crimes because the news media doesn’t talk about them.
It’s scary that people place this kind of trust in the news media.
