Watching the news coverage of the Ohio high school shooting last week reminded me of what makes me so angry about sensationalist journalism.

The first thing I read about the story at all was a headline on a website that read “Bullying may have pushed Chardon shooter.”

When this particular article published, the smoke hadn’t even cleared, literally. One student was still dying from the wounds he had suffered. Yet commentators were already publishing speculation-driven stories that serve no useful purpose.

If that wasn’t enough, the name of the shooter – which I won’t state here – was printed in big letters, along with a large photo of him for everyone to see. There’s the saying that you can’t buy publicity like this. The truth is, you can. The price is just in human life. This one cost two, plus one injured and one paralyzed. Maybe it’s just me, but too often when an incident occurs involving a large degree of suffering, it turns into a circus and does more harm than good. The media’s job is to report the news, not to influence it or exploit it, often with serious repercussions.

The best example I can think of occurred in Japan during the 1930s. In 1932, two young Japanese lovers threw themselves into the Saktayama volcano near Oiso because their parents forbade their marriage due to class differences. The Japanese newspapers handled it about as poorly as you can imagine. One of the headlines read “A Love That Reached Heaven.”

According to “Curious Events in History” by Michael Powell, the article intentionally exploited their suicide with scarcely concealed eroticism mixed with spirituality.

The result: There were over a thousand copycat suicides by the following year. The Japanese press continued to exploit this by publishing photos of young couples walking up the volcanos hand in hand to their deaths.

Powell writes that the copycats “were a direct result of the romantic hysteria generated by the media.”

Every time there is a school shooting, I feel newspapers and news stations inadvertently encourage copycats by portraying the shooters as tragic anti-heroes who act out of frustration due to perceived societal rejection or bullying. In an age where fame-seeking is considered a virtue, it also sends an unintended message that the easiest way to have your name and face in the news is to commit a heinous crime.

After the Virginia Tech massacre, NBC received a videotape and pictures from the killer – whom I will also not name – who mailed it before he had gone on his appalling rampage.

If NBC had wanted send the right message, they would have taken the tapes and burned them on live television as a warning to any would-be copycats: You won’t get free publicity from us. Instead, however, they aired it, and the killer got his 15 minutes of fame at the cost of 32 innocent lives and another 22 wounded.

Among a reporter’s fundamental skills is ability to discern what to put into a story and what to leave out. This can be done for several reasons. In a crime story, it’s done to protect the privacy of a victim or the victim’s family. In others, it’s because the information isn’t necessary for the public to know and is otherwise irrelevant.

But many times we keep details out of stories because publishing it has the potential to lead to greater problems than that which we are reporting on.

This is what happened with Colton A. Harris-Moore, a.k.a. “The Barefoot Bandit.” Rather than sticking strictly to the pertinent facts, newspapers shamelessly published photos Harris-Moore had taken of himself with stolen cameras, which were left behind in a mocking gesture. The articles also contained worthless anecdotes of how he left stolen money at animal shelters. How thoughtful.

The result was an impression of a mischievous, but well-intentioned Robin Hood-like folk hero. This same image was created for notorious bank robber and cop killer, John Dillinger. Because he looked like the debonair lady’s man, the press painted a sympathetic picture of him which remains to this day, while other murderers who operated at around the same time who were not blessed with similar publicity are remembered for what they truly were.

Freedom of information is essential to a free society. But this freedom also brings with it a somber sense of responsibility. And sometimes the responsible choice is to refrain from elaboration for the sake of decency.