Stop making mass shooters famous | Tom Teves

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4.1 • 11.9K Ratings

🗓️ 20 July 2020

⏱️ 15 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On July 20, 2012, a mass shooting in a movie theater of Aurora, Colorado left the town, and the nation, reeling. To many -- including Tom Teves, who lost his son in the tragedy -- the news coverage that followed focused on all the wrong things. Why did the reporting overwhelmingly fixate on the shooter rather than the lives of the victims or the heroic efforts of first responders? With urgency and measure, Teves calls for media attention that acts in the interest of the public (instead of profit) by revoking what shooters want most: infamy.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Do you know who's watching you?
0:01.7	Discover Palisade, the gripping new thriller that is becoming a terrifying reality.
0:07.4	In a world dominated by AI, two unlikely allies join forces to uncover corruption and murder at the highest levels.
0:15.7	But who can they trust when their deadly enemy tracks their every move?
0:20.1	Readers are calling it compelling and a taut thriller for our times.
0:24.2	Palisade by Lou Gilmonde.
0:26.3	Get your copy today and make sure no one's watching.
0:36.1	You're listening to TED Talks Daily. I'm Elise Hume.
0:39.8	There's something really powerful about notoriety, getting your name out there.
0:44.2	But today's speaker, Tom Teaves, links notoriety seeking to dangerous and increasing violence.
0:50.6	His powerful personal story, which you're about to hear, turned him into a media reformer.
0:56.1	In his TEDx Mile High talk from 2019, he sheds light on how changing the way mass shooters are covered in the press could potentially curb deadly killings.
1:09.4	Every parent's worst nightmare.
1:12.6	July 20th, 2012.
1:16.9	My phone rings at 4.30 in the morning.
1:21.0	It's my son Alex's girlfriend Amanda saying hysterically,
1:26.2	Tom, Tom, there's been a shooting, and they dragged me out of the theater.
1:33.1	They wouldn't let me stay. I wanted to leave, but they dragged me out.
1:38.9	I say to Amanda, Amanda, are you okay? Have you been hurt? And she said, no, that she was fine, that Alex had saved her life.
1:50.9	I then say, Amanda, where's Alex? And she says, sobbing, I don't know, we can't find him. They dragged me out of the theater. They made me leave. He was shot. I tried to wake him up, but I couldn't wake him up. He wouldn't get up. They dragged me away. I didn't want to leave him.
2:15.4	And I say to Amanda, the last time you saw Alex, was he bleeding? Did you have any of his
2:29.5	blood on you? And she cries, yeah, a lot, and breaks down.
	...

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