Opinion: Don't censor the New Zealand shooting videos
But no such law prevented the American press from running the videos.
When the 9/11 terrorists struck, the networks live-streamed that atrocity into American living rooms, including the human demolition of desperate people leaping from high windows to escape the flames. This attack was every bit as deliberate, calculated and web-savvy as the Christchurch assault, but the press didn’t retreat behind worries that the coverage might encourage another attack.
The “contagion” theory of mass killings, which instructs journalists to limit their coverage lest they inspire new villains to pick up the gun, is leaky. Asnoted in 2012, what to make of the fact that some killings, like Columbine, seem to have inspired additional killings, yet others, like the assault on Rep.
If the logic of squelching the Christchurch video is to prevent another attack—which, as you can tell, I find dubious—have the censors thought through the unintended consequences of their plan? Although the video has been driven underground, it can still be found and shared, and its forbidden status will only lend it additional cachet for certain audiences. Call it a bloody version of the Streisand effect.
The censor is never somebody who doesn’t want to see things. He wants very much to see salacious and disturbing stuff! He just thinks it’s his calling to prevent his neighbors from seeing the same material. When everybody is a potential publisher—something the millions of video takedowns counted by Facebook and Google help affirm—today’s censor can only delay and distort. Information may not, despite whatfounder Steward Brand once said, want to be free.
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