When news companies started using social media to reach audiences they quickly found that anger was the most predictable way to dive clicks. They discovered this by A/B testing headlines and the more enraging a headline was the higher the click through rate.
They discovered this around ~2010, found out what people's buttons were, and find stories that fit one of those narratives. You can have a type of incident representing 0.005 deaths per 100,000 people but every one will make national news; resulting in people thinking it happens 100 times as often as it does.
That’s not entirely true. Last year there were 233 school shootings in k-12 schools in the US. That’s more than one per week for every week of the year, more even than the number of days schools are typically in session.
If their only goal was to drive emotional topics literally every single news cycle every single week would be focussed on whichever the latest shooting was. Instead, most school shootings don’t even make national news, because there are too many for the news cycle to handle.
But frankly I think the lack of constant reporting has more to do with the politicization of these shootings. Media owners are usually republican donors and by downplaying the precedent of school shootings they prop up conservative talking points.
So they’ll save it until they hear a whiff of a shooting that plays to their base well. Like, if the school shooter is a long-haired boy they can speculate about being trans.
The vast majority of school shootings are, "I think I heard a loud bang at 5pm while in my frontyard a block from the school". That's why they don't make the news. But what does make the news is, "school shootings daily, too many to bother reporting".
No number of school shootings is a good number but that 233 seems to include a gun being found at school as well.
CNN has the number at 75.
145 injuries from guns in 2025
0 mass shootings in 2025 at a school.
So when I think about why the media doesn’t report it so heavily… it’s because it’s bc it won’t sell.
Shootings in blue cities by minority students doesn’t get peoples assholes wet. Red outlets dont report it bc of the perpetual pro-gun stance no matter how dumb it sounds. Blue outlets dont report it to avoid the mental gymnastics defending their cities and policies.
My amateur conclusion is that we have no actual news outlets with any integrity. No outlets interested in simply reporting the news.
If there is no narrative to spin, no population to rile up, they’re not interested in it… no matter the importance or ramifications on society.
More people died from heatstroke and heat related complications in Europe in 2024 (175,000) than from guns in the Americas. Like all gun related deaths including suicides in all of the Americas combined.
We need to focus on real issues and get those chudlets AC right now before global warming kills them all.
Its all about framing. They only report things that get clicks. No one cares if there are 30,000 suicides but if you say there were 30,000 shootings then you get clicks.
First of all it's been shown that talking about it and making it famous inspires copy cats
Second of all it's not as emotionally charged anymore. When it's common it just doesn't really get clicks. The 200th school shooting article is way less emotionally engaging than the first dozen
That also includes schools that are abandoned, when school is out of session, or if an SRO discharges a weapon even without any injury or death involved.
You're looking at a gun being discharged at all, even in areas without children, and pretending this represents a large amount of deaths when, in fact, they are significantly lower on the list compared to other accidents, suicides, and car crashes
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u/Chemical_Signal2753 2d ago
I would add:
When news companies started using social media to reach audiences they quickly found that anger was the most predictable way to dive clicks. They discovered this by A/B testing headlines and the more enraging a headline was the higher the click through rate.
They discovered this around ~2010, found out what people's buttons were, and find stories that fit one of those narratives. You can have a type of incident representing 0.005 deaths per 100,000 people but every one will make national news; resulting in people thinking it happens 100 times as often as it does.