The Media and the Assassinations

The distorted and counter-productive effects of much news media treatment of the Kennedy assassination compounded the tragedy itself, just as they did in the case of Martin Luther King. The impact of most of the reporting and editorial comment, here and abroad, was to suggest that both tragedies were typical of America and therefore proved the “sickness of our society,” the special nature of “American violence” and the guilt which all white Americans should feel over the assassination of three of the most prominent champions of Negro rights. A more likely explanation of the three murders is that there must exist in a nation of 200 million people tens of thousands of psychotic potential murderers whose unbalanced emotions and resentments are stimulated by the pace and change of modern life, emotions which may be activated by the effects of instant television. There also seems to be a contagious effect, which leads psychopaths or neurotics to imitate highly publicized acts of violence, just as it helps organized, cold-blooded revolutionary groups to exploit and imitate both the hysteria and the techniques revealed by the television pictures of the revolts in other countries. For example, the French students at the Sorbonne used the slogan, “This is our Berlin,” referring to the Berlin riots against the Springer press after the wounding of Rudi Dutschke. Similarly, the German who shot Dutschke said his action was “inspired” (or more aptly, “triggered”) by the murder of Dr. King.

This last conclusion was evidently shared by Robert Kennedy himself. In an article in the May 30 issue of Le Figaro, Romain Gary quoted Kennedy in a recent conversation as follows: “I know that there will be an attempt on my life sooner or later. Not so much for political reasons, but through contagion, through emulation.” Kennedy added that the world was in a peculiarly sensitive mood for this sort of emulation. Although he did not say so, surely it must be obvious that this mood is stimulated by instant, worldwide, massive and often morbid news coverage.

CE

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Christopher Emmet

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Martin Luther King Jr

The distorted and counter-productive effects of much news media treatment of the Kennedy assassination compounded the tragedy itself, just as they did in the case of Martin Luther King. The impact of most of the reporting and editorial comment, here and abroad, was to suggest that both tragedies were typical of America and therefore proved the “sickness of our society,” the special nature of “American violence” and the guilt which all white Americans should feel over the assassination of three of the most prominent champions of Negro rights. A more likely explanation of the three murders is that there must exist in a nation of 200 million people tens of thousands of psychotic potential murderers whose unbalanced emotions and resentments are stimulated by the pace and change of modern life, emotions which may be activated by the effects of instant television. There also seems to be a contagious effect, which leads psychopaths or neurotics to imitate highly publicized acts of violence, just as it helps organized, cold-blooded revolutionary groups to exploit and imitate both the hysteria and the techniques revealed by the television pictures of the revolts in other countries. For example, the French students at the Sorbonne used the slogan, “This is our Berlin,” referring to the Berlin riots against the Springer press after the wounding of Rudi Dutschke. Similarly, the German who shot Dutschke said his action was “inspired” (or more aptly, “triggered”) by the murder of Dr. King.

This last conclusion was evidently shared by Robert Kennedy himself. In an article in the May 30 issue of Le Figaro, Romain Gary quoted Kennedy in a recent conversation as follows: “I know that there will be an attempt on my life sooner or later. Not so much for political reasons, but through contagion, through emulation.” Kennedy added that the world was in a peculiarly sensitive mood for this sort of emulation. Although he did not say so, surely it must be obvious that this mood is stimulated by instant, worldwide, massive and often morbid news coverage.