The media should be very careful about how they cover shootings of the media

The shooting at the Capital Gazette newspaper in Annapolis appears to be the result of a defamation suit against the newspaper that had been brought by the killer. But the media needs to be very careful how they cover these cases. Saying that this is “one of the deadliest attacks on journalists in US history” or “worst mass shooting of journalists in the country” and then giving extensive coverage of the event, while understandable from the media’s perspective, is a mistake. You don’t want these killers thinking that they will get more notoriety by killing people in the media. It creates an incentive for someone else to break that record and think that they can get even more media coverage.  This isn’t saying that this killer did his attack for media coverage (it seems unlikely, though we simply don’t know enough at this point), but it is a concern about the incentives it creates for future attacks. Of course, this argument really applies to all media coverage of these attacks.