People Died Today

In today's encore excerpt - the media and the Columbine massacre, the mass killing
at Columbine High School that stands as the preeminent example of this horrifying
trend. In the hours after the April 20, 1999 massacre, the press began reporting
rumors as fact - that the killers were "targeting" jocks, were victims of bullying,
were Goths, and belonged to a gang called the Trench Coat Mafia. The myths they
promulgated in those first few hours were all incorrect, yet persist broadly as
explanations in the popular mind even to this day:
"The Trench Coat Mafia [explanation] was mythologized because it was colorful, memorable,
and fit the existing myth of the school shooter as outcast loner. All the Columbine
myths worked that way. And they all sprang to life incredibly fast--most of the
notorious myths took root [in the few hours] before the killers' bodies were found.
"We remember Columbine as a pair of outcast Goths from the Trench Coat Mafia snapping
and tearing through their high school hunting down jocks to settle a long-running
feud. Almost none of that happened. No Goths, no outcasts, nobody snapping. No targets,
no feud, and no Trench Coat Mafia. Most of those elements existed at Columbine -
which is what gave them such currency. They just had nothing to do with the murders.
The lesser myths are equally unsupported: no connection to Marilyn Manson, Hitler's
birthday, minorities, or Christians. Few people knowledgeable about the case believe
those myths anymore. Not reporters, investigators, families of the victims, or their
legal teams. And yet most of the public takes them for granted. Why? ...
"In a school of two thousand, most of the student body didn't even know the boys.
Nor had many seen gunfire directly. Initially, most students told reporters they
had no idea who attacked them. That changed fast. Most of the two thousand got
themselves to a television or kept a constant cell phone vigil with viewers. It
took only a few TV mentions for the trench coat connection to take hold. It sounded
so obvious. Of course! Trench coats, Trench Coat Mafia! ...
"Repetition was the problem. Only a handful of students mentioned the Trench Coat
Mafia (TCM) during the first five hours of CNN coverage - virtually all fed from
local news stations. But reporters homed in on the idea. ... Kids 'knew' the TCM
was involved because witnesses and news anchors had said so on TV. They confirmed
it with friends watching similar reports. ... Pretty soon, most of the students
had multiple independent confirmations. They believed they knew the TCM was behind
the attack as a fact. From 10 to 80 p.m., the number of students in Clement
Park citing the group went from almost none to nearly all. They weren't making it
up, they were [simply] repeating it back....
"The writers assumed kids were informing the media. It was the other way around.
Most of the myths were in place by nightfall. By then, it was a given that the
killers had been targeting jocks. The target myth was the most insidious, because
it went straight to motive. The public believes Columbine was an act of retribution:
a desperate reprisal for unspeakable jock-abuse. Like the other myths, it began
with a kernel of truth.
"Bullying and racism? Those were known threats. Explaining it away was reassuring.
By evening, the target theory was dominating most broadcasts; nearly all the major
papers featured it. ... Reuters attributed the theory to 'many witnesses' and USA
Today to 'students.' ... If students said targeting, that was surely it. Police
detectives ... were baffled by this media consensus."

Dave Cullen, Columbine, Hachette Book Group, Copyright 2009 by Dave Cullen, pp.
149-152.