As a long-time classroom teacher, I have become increasingly uncomfortable about the way spokespeople in the media describe young murderers of teachers and their fellow students.

For example, whenever the massacre at Columbine High School is mentioned in the media, every commentator evidently feels obligated to provide listeners and viewers not only with a reference to the place and date of the slaughter, but also with the full names of the murderers. Instead of the names of the murderers, correspondents could report "two apparently unbalanced youths" or "two evidently distraught young men," or even "two male fellow students armed with guns, knives, and explosives," etc. But no, if we have heard them once, we have heard them now a hundred times: Dylan Kleebold and Eric Harris. Sometimes it’s Eric Harris and Dylan Kleebold. And, in relation to other recent massacres, the full names of the young murderers have become so familiar to young people today that fan clubs, trading cards, poems, raps, bumper stickers, and posters are now advertising these sad disaffected teenagers—providing them with more than "fifteen minutes of fame."

Of course, journalistic thoroughness is part of the ethic of seeking accuracy. The reporter must be as complete and accurate as possible when presenting the news. Thoroughness is journalistically respectable. However, this compulsive journalistic thoroughness regarding school murders has other effects, not at all respectworthy.

Psychologists tell us that among the motivations for these young murderers is their desperate desire for recognition, for fame, for a form of immortality, even for a death well recognized. The media provide that recognition, that fame, that form of immortality: As the names are endlessly repeated on the news, the murderers are—in effect--celebrated.

I believe myself to be a civil libertarian, believe in freedom of speech. But the law recognizes limits to that freedom. Because of those too often perilous circumstances in which Americans who inhabit our schools may find themselves today, it is not always appropriate for reporters of fact to be "as complete-as-possible," only as complete-as-necessary in reporting the facts. And it is not necessary to give a boost to the fermenting plots of unbalanced, dissatisfied, potential copycats in the audience. In an atmosphere that now must more frequently address terror and terrorists, we should take care that in mentioning their deeds we do not celebrate them.

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