The Term "Mass Shooting" Confuses Public: Jodi Upton in USA Today Friday December 4, 2015

Two days after the latest incident of someone using multiple weapons to shoot and kill multiple people, this time in San Bernardino, CA, Jodi Upton wrote an article on the last page of the 'A' section of USA today. Entitled 'The Term "Mass Shooting" Confuses Public' the article indicates that, because we don't have a common definition for a mass shooting, the public my be more concerned than they should be:

"... the problem is one of definitions, sometimes used sloppily and interchangeably. The result: a very confused, and possibly hyperventilating public."

The FBI and the Congressional Research Service use definitions approximately that of four or more people killed with a firearm, not including the killer. Using that definition, the San Bernardino shooting was the 22nd mass shooting of the year.

The Stanford Mass Shootings and the Mass Shooting Tracker use the definition of three or four (respectively) people shot, not necessarily killed, and that may include the killer. Using those definitions, the San Bernardino shooting was one of more than 300 this year.

That is a big difference, as Jodi Upton states. She goes on to state that the use of the headline "Mass Shooting" is misleading, because the public sees "mass shooting" and thinks four or more killed, where in reality, three or more may have only been shot, not killed. Therefore, by her evaluation, the public is necessarily overly concerned and being mislead.

What planet is she living on? For her to apply her journalistic credentials to decide what the public should be or not be concerned with is the epitome of bad journalism, and crosses over into value judgements and editorialization. Journalists are supposed to present the facts and let the public decide what is important. For decades journalists have used their credentials to shape the news, not report it, and Upton continues that long line of journalistic over reach.

She continues with the following:

"Mass killings -- by firearm or other means -- have not increased since 2006; they are consistently about two dozen a year."

Fine. I absolutely agree with her that we should adopt clear, commonly accepted definitions for these kinds of events. But did she read her own title? The term she claims is confusing was "Mass Shooting", not "Mass Killing".

I would be perfectly happy if she called to task her own journalistic cabal for trying to sell more papers by substituting "Mass Killing" for a mass shooting, but for her to claim that the public should't hyperventilate because there aren't more mass killings, just more mass shootings, is bizarre.

Perhaps she should go interview the families of the people who were just shot, not killed, and tell them they should feel better, because their loved ones weren't killed. Perhaps she should hang up her journalistic creds and become another Republican candidate and tell the public not to worry, because the "Mass Shootings" aren't "Mass Killings". I should point out that her article ran directly under a graphic showing a map of the US with dots for the killings since Newtown, with the title "Hundreds Killed In Shootings Since Newtown".

BTW, her article quotes a Criminology professor, James Alan Fox, who states "That definition of four or more shot, rarely translates to four or more killed. One-third of these 'mass shootings' result in no fatalities, and only 5% are mass killings. However, this scary one-a-day statistic is rolled out whenever there is a large-scale mass killing, allowing unsophisticated readers to make the wrong connection."

So maybe that's the real target of the article: all those unsophisticated readers out there who don't have the sophistication to parse english and understand the difference between "shooting" and "killing". We need experts of the like of Fox and Upton to take the facts and spoon feed them to us in language so simple as to prevent us from possibly making a mistake in interpretation. And who will tell us when to be worried or not.

Please! Spare me from such experts!