It's impossible not to be repetitive
when you look back at a mass shooting,
it looks and feels like the present
and for moms and dads it always is.
What people don't understand is
this doesn't go away.
It doesn't get better.
You just get better at carrying it.
Like those people who say, well,
you're so strong, not really.
You don't understand that there's
four times a day that I want to double
over in paint on July 20th, 2012,
Tom and his wife Karen lost their son
Alex when a man with a gun entered a
dark theater and shot into the audience.
Alex used his body to shield his girlfriend.
She lived. Alex was among
twelve who did not 10 years ago.
Did you think things would change then?
That's that's one of the
things that kills me whenever
I see these mass shootings,
I see. Me. 10 years ago,
in the eyes of those fathers,
and you think, of course,
somebody's going to care about my
little boy or my little girl. Think
about if something did
change right after Columbine,
Alex would still be here.
I think about that all
the time and then after.
The Aurora theater shooting.
How many people have
had their lives stolen?
Because nothing was done after that,
there's 100 senators in the Senate.
There are some of the most powerful men
on Earth because they have that vote.
They've done nothing. All of them
I flew to Phoenix to see Tom and
Karen who founded the No notoriety
campaign. Shortly after losing their son.
What was your state of mind back then,
like we couldn't get any information,
all it was was the killer,
the killer, that killer,
their goal. Get news outlets to
stop focusing so much on shooters.
Because studies have shown
they want media attention.
No notoriety is now recognized by
police departments and many local media
companies like my Station 9 news.
Not long after the theater shooting
I tried to dissect everything
I could about the shooter.
I put the shooters image in the forefront
of my reports a lot and repeatedly
put his name in countless headlines.
Recently, have you noticed
a difference in media coverage?
We noticed that the victims are
forefront now where they never used
to be when Aurora happened all every
time we walked past the newspaper,
we would see that individual.
The shooter on the front page
of the I I contributed to that.
I was a reporter back in those times,
my first year at 9 news and I I thought
what I was doing was the right thing.
We all make mistakes.
I look back at that with a different
lens and I have to say what I did
was absolutely shameful and I feel
that that coverage happened today.
It would be quite distasteful
for us to do that.
What changed your mind?
I think the you I think there was
a day I remember being in the
scrum of the press and you were
angry and you you were angry.
Stop being gratuitous and
stop making them into heroes.
They're not heroes,
they're dirt bags who kill real people.
OK, these are real people and real families,
and there's 70 or 80 people
that are really injured.
And they'll be injured for life when
you guys all run to the next thing
that moment right there 10
years ago has stuck with me.
You know, the only thing that you
can tie them all together with.
Is wanting fame wanting to be infamous?
A 2019 study titled Fame seeking mass
Shooters in America found the press does
give more coverage to shooters who seek it.
The thieves known notoriety group
acknowledges a shooter's name
may have to be mentioned once,
but that coverage should
not revolve around him.
As for non-stop mass shootings,
the teens say they too are tired of
the headlines and the fact that more
parents are experiencing the worst loss.
I met the teams about a week
after the shooting in Osvaldo.
Like it's insane, what's going on and.
It's mental health, and that's very,
very complicated. Obviously,
as a country we don't want to address.
The gun issue. Because.
The powers that be either
say let's take all the guns.
Or let's let every person
on Earth have a gun.
Why can't we at this
point rush to the middle?
And let rational people from both sides
have a conversation and say you know what?
Our second graders are as
important as the Second Amendment.
This shouldn't be that hard.