上周末，社交媒体网站上充斥着奥斯卡获奖演员摩根·弗里曼（Morgan Freeman）的留言，他痛斥媒体对周五康涅狄格州纽敦悲剧的耸人听闻报道。这篇274字的批评文章无疑写得很好，并呼吁媒体将名人般的聚光灯对准实施这一不可思议行为的凶手。”“关掉新闻”是该帖的主要内容，该帖迅速走红，在Facebook上获得数百万人的喜爱。只有一个问题：不是摩根·弗里曼写的。弗里曼的公关斯坦·罗森菲尔德告诉《世界新闻报》，这位演员与桑迪·胡克枪击案的消息无关，他认为整个现象都是一个奇怪的骗局。

到目前为止，弗里曼的代表们仍在试图揭开这一错误消息的幕后黑手。最终，这又是一个例子，说明了一个帖子如何像野火一样在社交媒体上传播，几乎没有时间进行事实核查。不过，当你想象弗里曼平静的声音读下面的文字，这几乎是可信的。

You want to know why. This may sound cynical, but here's why.

It's because of the way the media reports it. Flip on the news and watch how we treat the Batman theater shooter and the Oregon mall shooter like celebrities. Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris are household names, but do you know the name of a single *victim* of Columbine? Disturbed people who would otherwise just off themselves in their basements see the news and want to top it by doing something worse, and going out in a memorable way. Why a grade school? Why children? Because he'll be remembered as a horrible m***ter, instead of a sad nobody.

CNN's article says that if the body count "holds up", this will rank as the second deadliest shooting behind Virginia Tech, as if statistics somehow make one shooting worse than another. Then they post a video interview of third-graders for all the details of what they saw and heard while the shootings were happening. Fox News has plastered the killer's face on all their reports for hours. Any articles or news stories yet that focus on the victims and ignore the killer's identity? None that I've seen yet. Because they don't sell. So congratulati***, sensationalist media, you've just lit the fire for someone to top this and knock off a day care center or a maternity ward next.

You can help by forgetting you ever read this man's name, and remembering the name of at least one victim. You can help by donating to mental health research instead of pointing to gun control as the problem. You can help by turning off the news.