I opened the paper this morning to discover that yesterday, 16-year-old Nicholas Browning pleaded guilty to shooting his parents and his two younger brothers last February.  As the story goes, he was playing video games at a friend’s house, and suddenly got up to go home.  He used his father’s gun and afterward returned to his friend’s house to play video games, pretending that nothing had happened.  The next day he went with his friends to a mall, then (according to one story, also linked earlier in this article) invited a large group over to his house for a party.  Upon arrival, he feigned surprise in front of his horrified friends who had been told that his family was out of town for the weekend.  Another statement is that a friend’s father drove him home from the mall, and after entering his house Nicholas came outside to tell the father that something was wrong.

I seized upon the video game detail.  Whether or not video games are the direct cause of violence is difficult to know, and studies have been done which point both ways on the issue.  In the case of Nicholas Browning, there may have been other elements involved–relatives and friends told the defense psychiatrist that they had seen Nicholas being by parents, and that he and his parents abused alcohol as well.  Friends recall Nicholas venting a great deal of anger about his father, and that he joked about killing his family.  However, I think there is something to Nicholas’ recollection of being in a trance-like state on the night of the killings, and also to the reports that he was playing video games immediately before and after the killings as well as the day following.  Nicholas may have played video games every day of his life, so logging several hours in front of a console (his house had two) might not have been unusual, but that doesn’t weaken the point that the teen may have had an unhealthy relationship with video games.  It can be hard to distinguish between fantasy and reality, especially when video games are used as a retreat–the world you want to live in and the world you actually live in start to blur together.

In themselves, video games are not necessarily a bad thing, but like any other unchecked addiction, too much time spent with them can lead to trouble.  Nicholas Browning certainly represents a worst-case scenario; more often, video game addicts grow alienated from friends and family, or their health suffers from a sedentary obsession.  None of the above is acceptable, and it is just one reason why all of us here at the LAMP feel so strongly about media literacy.  If you’re worried about violence in your community, media literacy might not take away the guns but it can take away a lot of reasons for pulling the trigger.  Violence is glamorized in many aspects of popular culture–as a path to fame, fortune, strength, power, sex and more–and that has to stop.  It will stop when we demand that it stops, and not a minute sooner.

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In one of our adult workshops about a year ago, we got on to the topic of credibility in blogs and of web news in general.  One student raised his hand and said that he gets confused because you can’t trust everything you read on the web, but you can trust what’s in a newspaper, which is why he doesn’t read blogs or online news.

It’s true that you can’t trust everything you read online, and we at the LAMP encourage our students to ask questions rather than take something at face value.  However, you also shouldn’t trust something in print just because it’s in print.  In fact, I would argue that in some ways you should be less trusting of print news than of web news, all for a little thing called the hyperlink.  When I read a news story online, I love it when every claim made by the author is backed up with a hyperlink which brings me to the source of the information, because it helps me make my own decisions about what I’m reading.

Let’s make an example: Suppose Jimmy Journalist claims that yesterday the sky was green and the grass was blue in Boise, Idaho.  To me this sounds crazy, and I’m inclined to ignore it, until I click on the hyperlink attached to the claim and see for myself that the source he used is a highly respected professor who is able to explain, from a scientific perspective, how and why this phenomenon is possible.  I still don’t have to believe it, but I have respect for the fact that the journalist made his reporting transparent enough that I can check things out for myself.  Imagine if William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer had to use hyperlinks when writing about the destruction of the Maine.

Therein lies part of the problem–nobody is required to use hyperlinks today.  Most articles I read in online versions of print newspapers (like the New York Times) do not link back to their sources.  This makes sense sometimes, as not all sources are from the Internet, but in most cases there is something online that can be used to back up a claim.  As far as I know, it’s never been standard practice for newspapers to include complete bibliographies for every article I print, but I wish it was.  Until then, long live the hyperlink, and journalism that makes use of it.

Location: P.S. 107, Brooklyn

Times: Mornings

Dates: Tuesdays and Thursdays from September 16 through October 30

Ages: 3rd grade

This fall, the LAMP is in residency with P.S. 107, exploring news and reporting with third graders.  In the workshops held twice a week for six weeks, students will explore the news and how it is made, exploring what makes news, where it comes from, how it is made, how it changes in print and digital formats, the use of text and pictures to tell a story, and more.  Students will also work hands-on in creating their own news stories, conducting interviews, writing and researching stories, while also creating and editing photography and video footage.

If you are interested in having the LAMP at your school, we would love to speak with you.  We can design curricula tailored to your needs and interests. Please call us at 718-789-8170 or send us an email.