We've all seen the horrific images of school shootings on the news.  Maybe we've seen too much in our efforts to keep it from happening again.

Marc Piscotty/Getty Images
Marc Piscotty/Getty Images
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I had an opportunity to present a few thoughts on how the media covers school shootings at the first ever Central Washington School Safety Summit at YVTEC this morning.

It was an honor to be asked and what I shared was the concept that while we have a right to know the details we don’t have the need to know  and too much knowledge can be a bad thing.  There are a number of studies that show the excessive sensational coverage of a tragic event can spawn copycats and actually perpetuate what is really a rare occurrence.

When the news devotes a disproportionate amount of time to school shootings the public gets the sense that there are more of them than there really are.  Parents and kids feel that they aren’t safe and emotion overrules common sense in searching for solutions and prevention. That’s how you get zero tolerance and a kid kicked out of school for a slice of baloney chewed into the rough shape of a gun.

At the same time we do need more focus and courage on mental health issues along with more resource officers and well rehearsed safety plans.

The numbers show kids are safer, the number of deaths is down but you would never know it by the media driven false reality.  The trick is to get better behavior out of the media and make the responsible investments in mental health and safety and leave the baloney alone.

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