When a news story is so tragic it becomes national news, if an explanation for the horrific situation is not clear right away, people search for one. These people are those directly affected by the tragedy, the media and the average American thousands of miles away from the story. The Columbine High School massacre was and still is this kind of news story. Columbine seniors Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold went on a shooting rampage and left 13 people dead, taking their own lives soon after. They must have been bullied or gothic or played too many video games, said the media. They must have snapped after years of built-up tension, added the public. No one — not the media, not the public, not even some of the boys’ classmates — suspected the truth. The media didn’t know that the teen killers had actually been fairly popular and intelligent (yet psychopathic and depressed) boys who had racked up a year’s worth of planning to end the lives of anyone they could find.
Columbine sparked rumors about how Eric and Dylan must have been bullied to go on such a rampage, their supposed involvement in the “Trench Coat Mafia,” the dead students being targeted due to ethnicity and religion… the list goes on. These rumors caused a media frenzy, inspiring schools to start more anti-bullying programs, citing gothic or outcast teens as the kids to keep an eye on and contributing to studies making correlations between video games and violence. The media spread the information they thought was true, but most of the rumors were myths. Years after the tragedy, books like Dave Cullen’s Columbine and articles from various media publications revealed that Eric was an arrogant psychopath who wanted to kill to rid the world of people he described as “stupid and weak organisms” (Cullen 184) and Dylan was depressed and suicidal and saw joining Eric in the shooting as an escape from his life.
Earlier reports had some of the boys’ classmates on record as saying the boys were part of the bullied, lonely Trench Coat Mafia group (when Eric, in fact, was a well-liked boy who bullied and ostracized others, and Dylan was his depressed but participating sidekick). Other classmates said students who were African-American or religious were targeted, but USA Today, as the boys’ journals and FBI reports revealed, said the boys actually aimed to kill everyone they could; they originally planned to bomb the school but resorted to gunfire when the bombs did not go off.
The fact these myths circulated for so long shows how the media can generate an idea and the public will simply accept it and take action, even if there is no concrete proof. These myths caught my interest because they show how myths and stereotypes can be misconstrued as true in the media; therefore, misleading the public. But I believe everyone has the right to know the truth about what goes on in the world.
The Columbine massacre took place in 1999, but it is such a shocking and complex story that the public still follows it closely. Columbine is what media literacy experts call a media event. In order to be identified as a media event, the public must follow this event closely via the media and feel like they are a part of it. A media event makes history, requires large amounts of people to come together to help, has media create myths about what occurred and has a hero (or heroes) that contributes to an overall meaning. The public has cited Columbine as one of the greatest American tragedies for years and continues to look for any new information revealed about the shooting. After the massacre, many schools increased security and enforced stricter weapon policies, coming together in an attempt to prevent more events like this. The aforementioned myths spread until about 2005 when police records proved many of them untrue, and there were many heroes, from the police officers to the schools that made security stricter to the police who eventually brought more information to light.
Investigating Columbine helped me see how the media can take misleading ideas and spread them so quickly that the whole country panics. While bullying can contribute to victims resorting to violent circumstances, Eric and Dylan were the bullies for most of their teen years and killed because of extreme psychological problems. While the media is aware of this now, it is important for people to recognize how the media can let an issue get out of hand with misleading information. While I have high respect for the media, it can perpetuate myths quickly and I will investigate for myself before automatically believing what sources tell me. I hope any readers see this as an opportunity to truly look into an issue before trusting common myths and stereotypes spread by each other and the media.
Additional References
Cullen, D. (2009). Columbine. New York, NY: Twelve.