Princeton dodges bullet after media hypes up toy gun-toting teens

PANIC!!!!!

This little note was put up on the Princeton University website this morning at 11:07 am:

Shortly before 11 a.m. Wednesday, June 3, a male with what appeared to be a handgun was reported near the vicinity of Dod Hall dormitory. Princeton University’s Department of Public of Safety and Princeton Borough and Township police are investigating.

Stay indoors until further instructions.

via Princeton University – EMERGENCY NOTIFICATION.

Actually, the Daily Princetonian reported, two ‘juveniles’ (young black townies?) were spotted near a furniture drive on campus, and one of them had a toy gun. “There were no reports of threatening behavior or injuries,” the paper adds, with an all-clear going out at 11:25 am.

Still, that didn’t stop every news media outlet in the world from getting ready to report on the Princeton Panic. WABC News informed me via text message of a ‘possible gunman’ on campus!

At 11:27 am.

In New York media circles at least, WABC is known for being a bit of a tip of the spear on breaking news. When I used to work for a daily paper here in the city, WABC sent out news alerts on developments before anyone else. In this case, it’s like their producers (and those at many other outlets) were just bubbling over with joy that instead of whatever other ’slow news’ was happening today, it was time to gas up the satellite van and grab the extra camera batteries and race down to Central Jersey all the while creating TERROR ON CAMPUS chyrons. There were helicopters overhead around noon.

So WABC and other news outlets were building up a panic over shots that weren’t fired from a gun that didn’t exist. But what if they had sent out an alert before shots were fired by an actual gunman on Princeton’s campus?

As our Ryan Sager warned presciently just before the Binghamton massacre in April, the media’s constant build-up of mass killers actually makes it more likely that people who crack up will go down in the biggest blaze of glory and firepower they can muster. I fear that if the theoretical gunman on Princeton’s campus had known he was already under media scrutiny before a single shot was fired, he might have decided he just had to pop off all the ammunition he had with him.

Sadly, the biggest losers in this case are the kids; after being detained without any reasonable cause, they’ve now been charged with possessing marijuana and alcohol. I guess in the town versus the gun, it’s the mortarboards that win; and it’s the media that puts the satellite van back into the garage, not really caring about all the people they freaked out in the process.

Then again, blame us, too. Look at all the clucking on Twitter, where you can track the mass human organism’s transition from PANIC to disappointment that there was nothing to Tweet about.