Edinburgh: Media “bears some responsibility” for copycat school killings, says award winning novelist
Posted by
Colin Crummy
on 26 August 2007 at 22:18
Tags: Edinburgh 2007, Edinburgh International Television Festival
The media must bear some responsibility for copycat shootings in American schools if it insists on over hyping news stories, according to an award-winning novelist.
Lionel Shriver, speaking at the Edinburgh International Television Festival, said she would never blame TV editors for incidents like Columbine and Virginia tech killings but added that sensationalistic, conspiratorial TV news could spur copycat crimes. “The over the top response of the media, especially television may bear some responsibility for the continued school killing phenomena in the US.”
Shriver, whose book, We Need to Talk About Kevin was inspired by the school massacres like Columbine, added: “I would never argue for censorship but I might argue for restraint.” The novel, about motherhood gone wrong, won Shriver the women only Orange prize for fiction in 2005.
The novelist was tackling the issue of what she termed “the hyper narrative” – the willingness by the media to pump just a story using exaggeration, rumour and conspiracy. Shriver said the hyper narrative meant: “A good story, of nominal importance, is played up by the media because it satisfies an imaginary hunger.”
Shriver cited the Michael Jackson child abuse trial and Paris Hilton’s jail time as examples of the genre, pinpointing the coverage of the O.J. Simpson murder trial as the kick-start of this kind of “hyper narrative”.
The novelist commended the parents of Madeleine McCann for refusing to become involved in a similar news agenda – “it was the hyper narrative that never happened” she said, “because the family did not cooperate”. She condemned the charges of negligence, complicity or guilt the media had laid upon the McCanns’ following their daughter’s disappearance. Shriver said a narrative of “girl disappears – the end” did not satisfy the media’s need to turn the story into “a thriller”. “It’s all very well to do this in a book, but not in real life,” she said:
She criticised the media attack on police witness Robert Murat who had endured “a cloud of suspicion over him” which would remain for his lifetime.
Tags: Edinburgh 2007, Edinburgh International Television Festival
