Days after the Navy Yard shooting, some new information surfaced about the shooter, Aaron Alexis. Americans learned about his job, his home life, and his possible motives. But there was one aspect about him that apparently stood out to news organizations around the nation: his avid obsession with video games.
It’s no secret that this topic has been collectively attacked by news agencies for over a decade, but were these attacks justified? The problem these articles bring to the forefront is that modern news sites aren’t looking to report the news, but rather to perpetuate problems the general public perceives as relevant in order to gain publicity.
They know that someone’s mom will read the article and hear that video games can drive someone to mass murder. This makes them go on to share it on their Facebook wall so that other parents will see it and generate more ad revenue for the site. This means people view the sites advertisements, making money for the company because of exaggerated title..
It’s textbook sensationalism, where news organizations exploit a minor aspect of the suspect’s life to grab the attention of the reader. It’s an age-old news technique that can actually hurt an industry, and often does.
It’s quite obvious that consumption of violent media is pretty high in America, but why is this subject focused on so heavily by the news when as of 2011, according to a study by The Entertainment Software Association, 72% of Americans had a video game of some form in their home? It is essentially useless to focus on an activity that nearly three quarters of the nation plays, but that won’t stop the media.
Junior Joseph Downing said “I don’t think violent games influence kids, and I hope the news doesn’t think kids are that impressionable.”
The bottom line is that violent video games are played by all kinds of people. Of course, a few of them may have a few screws loose. The fact that a shooter has video games in their house shouldn’t be the focal point of the media, rather the fact that they were so mentally unstable that they would commit the crime in the first place. The sooner the media learns this, the sooner we can put old assumptions to bed.