How Not to Cover a Shooting

J.J. Gould proposes a different kind of coverage in the event of shootings like the one in Aurora:

One way is that, rather than merely adopting a code, and promulgating a norm, about not featuring certain things in their coverage of mass murder, our better media can do what our better media has always done as a matter of vocation: It can go on the attack and shame those responsible for social exploitation -- in this case, their fellow media outlets for their journalistic failures in covering stories like the Aurora killings.

And on the subject of politicization, Max Read says there's no such thing:

James Holmes did not materialize in a movie theater in Aurora this morning, free of any relationship to law and authority and the structures of power in this country; nor did he exit those relationships and structures by murdering 12 people and injuring several dozen more. Before he entered the theater, he purchased guns, whether legally or illegally, under a framework of laws and regulations governed and negotiated by politics; in the parking lot outside, he was arrested by a police force whose salaries, equipment, tactics and rights were shaped and determined by politics. Holmes' ability to seek, or to not seek, mental health care; the government's ability, or inability, to lock up persons deemed unstable — these are things decided and directed by politics. You cannot "politicize" a tragedy because the tragedy is already political. When you talk about the tragedy you're already talking about politics.

(Video via Helen Lewis)