The stabbing spree on a Taipei Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) train on Wednesday last week shocked Taiwan. One of the things that we should pay attention to in relation to this incident is that reports in the media can trigger copycat crimes.
Take for example the random killings in Akihabara, Japan, on June 8, 2008. Following extensive news coverage of the incident, by June 24 that year, 17 people between the ages of 13 and 30 had announced their intent to commit copycat attacks. Six of these people were teenagers and two of them were women.
Taiwanese society is more easily agitated than Japanese society, so there are concerns over what may happen in the wake of the MRT stabbings.
The kind of reporting most likely to trigger copycat crimes is the kind that individualizes an offense.
There are three ways of doing this: by repeatedly reporting the name of the suspect and digging into their background, giving other people the idea that they could gain fame overnight; by reporting that offers specific explanations for the suspect’s motives and emphasizes individual factors over family and social factors, because that can make people identify with the suspect; and by comparing domestic cases with international cases that are similar, because that can strengthen the idea that these types of crimes are a way to leave ones name in history.
The most extreme distortion of such individualized reporting are Internet fan pages, on which people worship their dark idols. However, the government and the media often tolerate such extreme forms of expression in the name of free speech, and do nothing to prevent them, although they know full well that they can result in copycat crimes.
When dealing with killing sprees, press freedom suddenly deteriorates into a free-for-all competition for higher ratings — and that lacks all frame of reference for what is just and right.
The fact is that indirectly helping the suspect to promote him or herself and triggering potential copycat crimes is only one of the negative consequences of sensationalized media reporting. Another is reckless speculation over a suspect’s possible motives and labeling certain groups or types of people as “potential offenders.” This can lead to those groups or people suddenly being regarded in a negative way.
Three days after the Akihabara killings, the Japanese government set up a “crime forecast Web site” to encourage Internet users to report potential copycat crimes so that it could warn, detain or file lawsuits against potential copycats and quickly suppress any trends from forming. TV stations complemented this action by suspending sensational reporting, 13 local governments began to register merchants selling knives and the Yahoo Japan auction and shopping sites stopped selling knives.
Taiwanese are more easily agitated than Japanese, we have even less confidence in our government and we are not good at collectively maintaining discipline. As we are dealing with our first case of a deadly attack on the Taipei MRT, the government and the media must act quickly to quell extensive sensational media reporting which only serves to spread fear throughout society and increases the risk of copycat crimes.
There are many techniques the media could use to prevent this kind of development: avoid reporting the suspect’s name, in-depth reporting about the suspect and reporting the details of the offense but examining the social reasons behind it, encouraging government prevention and teaching people self defense.
Julian Kuo is the vice president of Formosa E-News.
Translated by Eddy Chang and Perry Svensson
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