Obama Passes Mass Shooting Bill: Media No Longer Allowed To Name Mass Shooting Suspect

Obama Passes Mass Shooting Bill: Media No Longer Allowed To Name Mass Shooting Suspect

Washington, DC — President Barack Obama held a press conference today to announce signing into law a bill that prevents U.S. media outlets from naming the shooting suspect in any of their news coverage.

NBC News: Source Link

This does appear to have already gone through congress, gotten congressional approval, and has now been signed into law by the President of the United States. This new law, flies in the face of the first amendment of the constitution, Freedom of the Press.

Freedom of the Press. The right, guaranteed by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, to gather, publish, and distribute information and ideas without government restriction; this right encompasses freedom from prior restraints on publication and freedom from Censorship.

This right encompasses freedom to gather, distribute and publish information without censorship from government, and without government interference. This law is as unconstitutional as you can get.

It DOES NOT MATTER what you personally think might be good reasons for a news organization not to publish such information, what matters is that passing a law created solely to censor what the press can or cannot publish, is against our constitutional rights.

Journalists and news organization MUST not be restricted under the law, and CANNOT be according to the law!

This is tyranny at worse, and governmental overreach at best. This is illegal, and its time to fight back! If they are so afraid of the pen and the power of words, then its time to use those weapons .. I for one, am perfectly willing to go to jail over this, and lets just see what the supreme court has to say!

I'm up in the air on this. On one hand I don't believe we should restrict the press in any manner, but at the same time we need to stop making instant celebrities, for lack of a better term, out of these murderers.

I'll have to think on this one before I jump to one side or the other.

While I think that the media should choose not to name the shooter in these situations, this seems like a slap in the face to the American people.

Why are we letting our constitution become toilet paper?


I'm seeing the death of it, by a thousand tiny cuts.

a reply to: chiefsmom

I don't know, and on this I am absolutely livid!

On the one hand, suppressing press in any manner is a terrible thing (Not like it's not being done any way, lets be honest)
On the other hand, putting these people on a pedestal is going to motivate crazies in the future to do the same thing for the fame. And as we seen CNN in the past few weeks just blatantly saying his name over and over again for the ratings...

Sh*t needs balance.

But then again, it also craps all over the constitution and that's a very DANGEROUS fork in the road to go down.

If that wasn't a violation of the 1st Amendment, I don't know what is. I understand the motive, but the method is out of line. The MSM is just a government mouthpiece anyway and this is about as overt as they can get about it.

Great , we all know that the media spins things

But now were going to outright come out and tell them what they can and cannot report on?

Sorry, we have a constitution Mr.President, you can take that proclamation and shove it

The Right to choice, freedom of speech, part of that freedom is not always liking what you hear.....

God this guy , and its going to get worse the closer he gets to being out of office

originally posted by: introvert
I'm up in the air on this. On one hand I don't believe we should restrict the press in any manner, but at the same time we need to stop making instant celebrities, for lack of a better term, out of these murderers.

I'll have to think on this one before I jump to one side or the other.

Me too. I am VERY conflicted here...

The question at hand (given the medi shmedia disinfo age) is will this impact the aftermath in a positive or negative manner? Im w/Into, on the fence....

Eithor way, its detrimental that there has to EVEN has to be a bill, as such....sadly.

It seems that people are upset because their First Amendment right to free speech is infringed on.
How does that differ from the people who support their Second Amendment rights and the constant appeals for changing it?

I guess the shoe hurts when it's on the other foot. It's my opinion that NO Amendment should be infringed upon.

a reply to: introvert

It should be the choice of a news organization what to publish.. it is NOT in any way shape or form the choice of the government what is allowed to be published.

We have freedom of the press for a reason, and if we let it start here because we think its a good reason, it will never end!

Hm.. Cover up in the making?

originally posted by: introvert
I'm up in the air on this. On one hand I don't believe we should restrict the press in any manner, but at the same time we need to stop making instant celebrities, for lack of a better term, out of these murderers.

I'll have to think on this one before I jump to one side or the other.

Unfortunately that is an aspect of our society, independent of news reporting. There is no compromise on an issue like this. OP is dead on.

Fix society to stop making celebrities out of these people.

I hope there are 1 or 2 journalists left who would choose professional duty over tyranical laws.

I for one, am tired of people trying to legislate away human nature. It will never work, and only causes worse problems. We need to recognize and embrace our nature if we ever want to improve it, not hide from it behind legislation.

I think everyone knows the conspiratorial aspect to this, so ill leave that to others, except to say it does tingle the tin foil.

What the .. Really

Ok SO first you have people "Don't Name the Shooter! Don't Name the Shooter!"
now you have same people
"Don't step on the constitution, Freedom of Press!"

sorry can't have it both ways pick one


I personally will choose Keep, freedom of the Press

I don't buy it could make another shooter.

If that were the case How many Adolf Hitlers would there be running around?
How many Charles Manson?
How many Jesus Christ?
How many Dali Lama?

just visit any other countries major news site and i'm sure there will be names/pictures of him and his dog/his favourite weapon and 1001 other things up in no time as theres nothing he can do across the borders

a reply to: OpinionatedB

And how long will it be before they censor the news the U.S. has access to,
such as NPR, or Reuters, or The Guardian?

Something tells me this is not what this is really about.
This is faulty logic; and a red herring.

a reply to: OpinionatedB

I don't understand the outrage.

There are already MULTIPLE laws that govern what journalists can do and not do over print or on the air.

The naming of victims for example, the naming of suspects pending grand jury investigations, the name of minors etc.

All of these things are 'restrictions' to the press. Which are fine IMO.

There's no reason we should allow the media to glorify mass shooting suspects within minutes of the coverage starting. It's one of the reasons why we have so many shootings, because of media saturation.

~Tenth

a reply to: ISawItFirst

I agree and believe we should err on the side of the constitution. This entire deal confuses me. I have not been able to find the actual bill. I'd like to read it before I go too far.

Something is odd here.

a reply to: Pebujesa

Yes you can, I prefer that they DONT name the shooter of course

But im not willing to violate the constitution for it..

Theres a HUGE difference

There should be no deliberation what so ever on this, you dont violate freedom of speech because you PREFER that people do something

Another slippery damn slope, we know that they media black out, but this is blatant and in your face.....

Goebbles anyone?

This is a hoax. Look at some of the other stories on the site.