Quote (Handcuffs @ Aug 5 2019 11:07am)
It doesn't even necessarily have to be a ban by the government. There's already largely understood and accepted practices that media companies voluntarily engage in whenever covering stories of high-profile suicides, because the suicide rate spikes significantly after such traditional coverage, and so they change the way they report on it.
The same thing could begin to happen with respect to mass shootings, but media companies don't care enough at the moment to make a change because trauma porn brings in money and the average American wants to play no part in owning responsibility for a solution and instead wants to talk about systems that exist outside of them, like gun control, mental health, etc.
one of the issues would be the funneling effect. as you restrict the number of outlets who are refusing to print the name/picture the outlets that do print them will get more clicks, hand over fist. in reality the media companies know this, and will just continue business as usual for that reason. IMO you need some sort of regulation, and even then you get into the 'problem' of some offshore media outlet still running the face/name that people look up online. in a reality where less people consume news through newspapers and TV it would be increasingly hard to enforce. still it would be nice not to see a full bio of a whacko shooter on ABC nightly news.