We have to say their names: It’s not “glorifying” mass murder to report on it — and refusing to won’t help

Chris Harper-Mercer. John Russell Houser. Vester L. Flanagan II. Dylann Roof.  Elliot Rodger. Adam Lanza. Seung-Hui Cho. James Holmes. I could go on, unfortunately, like this for a very long time, listing the men who in just the past few years have committed some of America's deadliest mass shootings. And I wouldn't be glorifying them. I wouldn't be giving them fame. I wouldn't be giving them what they wanted. I would be stating facts. Because we now live in a country in which we need to have regular conversations about how we talk about it whenever some unhinged man with ammunition goes into a school or a church or a movie theater and starts murdering people, there has been of late a push to not put their names and faces all over the media, for fear of inspiring copycats. And indeed Mercer was allegedly enamored of Vester Flanagan, who killed two former television news colleagues live on the air this past summer. On MySpace, Mercer reportedly wrote, "I have noticed that so many people like him are all alone and unknown, yet when they spill a little blood, the whole world knows who they are. A man who was known by no one, is now known by everyone. His face splashed across every screen, his name across the lips of every person on the planet, all in the course of one day. Seems the more people you kill, the more you're in the limelight." After Mercer's deadly spree in Oregon last week, Douglas County Sheriff John Hanlin refused to give him the attention in death that he sought in life. "