Identifying Killers

Over at the Poynter Institute, Al Tompkins has a big-think piece on our practice of identifying the accused in mass murder cases.

There is a lot to process in this piece. Does our incessant coverage of these stories fuel future ones? How do we balance the public’s right to know with our responsibility to build a better society?

Spend some time over the remaining days of 2013 thinking about this – does every story about a victim need to include the accused? And, in both a media-obsessed and media-saturated society, what is our responsibility to our community?

I need to find a large sum of quiet time to think this one through …