Perhaps most disturbingly, the mainstream news did not limit their inaccurate coverage of video game related massacres to the 1990’s. While it may be fair to say that the news of the 90’s were simply covering a new and potentially dangerous phenomenon, in an attempt to inform the public, they still continue to inaccurately cover massacres, particularly the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. Just a few days after Adam Lanza committed massacre, several news outlets in the UK ran the enormous front page headline “Killer [Adam Lanza]’s Call of Duty Obsession”, followed by a two page spread containing captions describing Adam Lanza’s house as a “[Call of Duty] Black Ops Bunker” and stating that the “Killer lived in windowless lair playing violent video games” (Yin-Poole). This article is incredibly reminiscent of the articles described by Ferguson, as it places the blame entirely on video games, trying to
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Due to isolated incidents such as the Columbine or Sandy Hook shooting, some speculate that there is a correlation between playing video games and committing a heinous act against innocent people. This type of logic is simply unfounded, as any good statistician will point out. In fact, a 2004 report by the Secret Service into the causes of school attacks found that “The largest group of attackers exhibited an interest in violence in their own writings, such as poems, essays, or journal entries (37 percent, n = 15)” (Secret Service, 22) compared to just 12 percent of attackers exhibiting an interest in violent video games. Does this correlation imply that literature is causing children to become violent? Such an accusation is absurd, however, it has become standard to apply this same accusation to video games, despite the fact that the correlation is even lower than it is for
Due to isolated incidents such as the Columbine or Sandy Hook shooting, some speculate that there is a correlation between playing video games and committing a heinous act against innocent people. This type of logic is simply unfounded, as any good statistician will point out. In fact, a 2004 report by the Secret Service into the causes of school attacks found that “The largest group of attackers exhibited an interest in violence in their own writings, such as poems, essays, or journal entries (37 percent, n = 15)” (Secret Service, 22) compared to just 12 percent of attackers exhibiting an interest in violent video games. Does this correlation imply that literature is causing children to become violent? Such an accusation is absurd, however, it has become standard to apply this same accusation to video games, despite the fact that the correlation is even lower than it is for