Reporters jumped on official revelations that the latest Ft. Hood shooter had been treated for emotional problems. Some advocates for the mentally ill objected, saying it embellished an inaccurate stereotype.
But mental illness was the first and best explanation for Spc. Ivan Lopez killing and wounding fellow soldiers.
My question: Do we need to explain everything in the first hour or should reporters hesitate rather than imply that troubled combat veterans are likelier to kill?
Crazed shooters, druggies and out-of-work vets have become a journalistic and literary staple. If we’re on the ball, we should note the difficulty active military and veterans have in getting care for emotional problems.
• I’ll bet some researcher could find similar sensational stories about shootings among returned military after WW2, Korea, Vietnam, Gulf War, Iraq and Afghan invasions, etc.
This probably began with Howard Unruh, a decorated but crazy World War II vet, credited with being the country’s first single-event mass shooter. He killed 13 during a 1949 neighborhood stroll in New Jersey.
• Reporters lost the big picture in their cliché coverage of the aftermath of Ft. Hood. The Pentagon says more active duty military and veterans kill themselves every day. When was the last time you saw any president or general mourn them?
Context includes the hundreds of unfilled Pentagon and VA professional positions for counselors, psychologists and psychiatrists. Meanwhile, the military and VA admit they were unprepared for the numbers of men and women returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with PTSD, traumatic brain injury and other physical and emotional problems that affect their thinking and behavior.
• Finally, the military is admitting it failed to reject large numbers of recruits with mental/emotional problems. That’s an overdue twist on an old story. When disturbingly large numbers of combat troops were being discharged with less than honorable discharges, the Pentagon blamed the offending behaviors on pre-enlistment mental problems.
Defensive veterans’ advocates said those discharges were a way of reducing or avoiding VA and pension costs.
Now, the Pentagon is saying that many recruits never should have been accepted: too much emotional baggage.
That takes us back to recruiters and the lack of competent professional staff to evaluate recruits as well as veterans for emotional stability.
As Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said, “You go to war with the army you have.”
• If reporters need to be politically correct or socially sensitive about the coincidence of mental illness and lethal violence, what do we report when authorities with access to medical records tell us a killer was diagnosed with mental problems? Consider:
Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 at Virginia Tech. He’d been diagnosed and treated for severe anxiety disorder. His attack stands as the worst single school shooting.
Adam Lanza quickly was labeled mentally ill after he shot his mother, 20 Sandy Hook elementary school children, six other adults and himself in Newtown, Conn.
James Holmes killed 12 when he opened fire in an Aurora, Colo., movie theatre. He’d seen mental health professionals; a mailed notebook is a piece of contested evidence. CBS News said Holmes was brought to the attention of the university’s Behavior Evaluation and Threat Assessment team and University of Colorado campus police were contacted at least for a background check on Holmes.
• On the other hand, after Army Maj. Nidal Hasan killed 13 fellow soldiers at Ft. Hood, he didn’t claim to be crazy. Rather, witnesses said he shouted Allahu akbar, Arabic for God is great, before or during his rampage.
An American-born Muslim, he’s been sentenced to death. We know Hasan was increasingly radicalized by strife in the Middle East. But do we quote his reported shout, given the heightened post-9/11 anxieties about Islam and Muslims and the overwhelmingly Muslim forces we face in Iraq and Afghanistan? Do we leave the inference to be drawn that Islamic fervor can make even an Army psychiatrist crazy enough to kill?
• Read The Enquirer’s Scott Wartman recent story on Baptist legislators in Kentucky politics. It’s not news or new, but he shines light on what a lot of people mutter darkly about. Church-state tensions apart, Wartman shows how their power is not demonic unless voters are possessed; Kentuckians elect a disproportionately large number of Baptists.
• NPR’s Weekend Edition “cover story” on April 6 looked at the impact of unvaccinated children going to school in rich Marin County, in the San Francisco Bay Area. Kids are getting mumps. They’ve had measles outbreaks. The show did a good job of explaining how nearly universal pre-school vaccinations protect youngsters who cannot accept the vaccines as well as most children who are protected. It’s called “herd immunity” when so many children are vaccinated that the “herd” doesn’t give individual cases of measles, mumps or rubella a chance to spread. Although I shouldn’t have been surprised, author Seth Mnookin told NPR that studies of outbreaks and resistance find that anti-vaccination families tend to be wealthier and better educated than their more cautious neighbors. If vaccines are unnatural, I guess, to be consistent, these affluent Californians should also affirm the deaths of unvaccinated children are therefore natural.
CONTACT BEN L. KAUFMAN: letters@citybeat.com
This article appears in Apr 23-29, 2014.