TheTrenchcoat Chronicles

I've posted about Dr. Jerald Block before. He's a psychiatrist from the Oregon Health & Science University who theorizes that the cowardly scumbags Harris and Klebold went on their rampage because they were both denied access to their computers in the days prior to their attack. While I don't agree 100% with Dr. Block's theory I do think that is does have a lot of merit and may have been the breaking point.

However I'm not here to talk about Dr. Block's work. I'm here to talk about what in my opinion is lazy journalism.

In this article from UPI they editorialize while paraphrasing Dr. Block...

Prior to the shootings, both teens spent a significant amount of time playing first-person-shooter computer games. Block suggests that these virtual worlds became essential for the teens and that Harris and Klebold may have been unable to distinguish the boundaries between their virtual lives and their real lives -- in effect mixing the two.

That seems to imply that Dr. Block thinks that games like Doom were the main cause behind Columbine.

However in this article by WebMD, who Dr. Block actually spoke to, he says no such thing.

Before the attack, shooters Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold spent "more and more time with their computers, to the point that they may have been unable to distinguish the boundaries between their virtual lives and their real lives," says Oregon Health & Science University psychiatrist Jerald Block, MD.

"Then, as they got into trouble with school authorities, limits were put on their use of the computer. This made them react with homicidal rage and suicidal depression," he tells WebMD.

Does that sound like Dr. Block is blaming video games? Not to me. Personally it doesn't even sound like he's blaming computers or the internet.

He is basically giving a warning to parents to not let their kids immerse themselves wholly into any of these things. Yet the UPI article never mentions that at all.

There's nothing wrong with editorializing, that's what I'm doing right now. Editorializing in what's supposed to be an informative article is just bad journalism.

(Cross posted at CrimeNe.ws)

Study links computer denial to Columbine:
This is one of the more sensible explanations for Columbine I've heard in a long time.

Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold went on a killing rage at Columbine High School in 1999 because they were abruptly denied access to their computers, an Oregon psychiatrist says in a published study.

The two young men relied on the virtual world of computer games to express their rage and to spend time, and cutting them off in 1998 sent them into crisis, said Jerald Block, a researcher and psychiatrist in Portland.

"Very soon thereafter - a couple of days - they started to plan the actual attack," Block said.

Block published his research in the current issue of the American Journal of Forensic Psychiatry, a peer- reviewed journal.

The paper is likely to generate debate, said Cheryl Olson, co-director of the Center for Mental Health and Media at the Massachusetts General Hospital.

Block sifted through thousands of pages of documents released by Columbine investigators and said he believes both Harris' and Klebold's parents banned them from their computers after the two were caught breaking into an electrician's van in 1998.

Harris and Klebold had each previously been temporarily kept off computers at school or at home, and after each incident, Block said, the boys' writings or behavior became more violent.

Block said he worries about people immersing themselves so deeply and also about cutting them off cold-turkey.

"How do you pull them out, without triggering homicidal or suicidal behavior?" he asked.

Personally I don't think that was the only reason but it very may well have been a major one. However those two cowardly scumbags were so selfish and spoiled that Dr. Block may be on to something.