The pattern is chilling, as if the sniper is watching experts on television predict his next move, and then acting on it. Robert Ressler, a ex-FBI profiler, suggests on CNN’s Larry King Live that the sniper might travel as far south as Richmond, perhaps ‘‘down to Ashland’’. The next day, a 37-year-old man is shot in the stomach leaving the Ponderosa Restaurant in Ashland.Gregg McCrary, a former FBI psychological profiler, tells CBS News on a Friday that the sniper has ‘‘a God complex, killing these people at random and from a long distance.’’ The following Monday, a 13-year-old boy is shot after being dropped off at school. The sniper reportedly leaves behind a Tarot card, the death card, inscribed with the message: ‘‘Dear Mr Policeman, I am God.’’And Bo Dietl, a former New York detective who served as the model for the film One Tough Cop, tells CNN audiences that the sniper is ‘‘a coward’’. More shootings follow.‘‘We’re egging him on,’’ said Dorothy Otnow Lewis, a clinical professor at Yale University and author of Guilty by Reason of Insanity: A Psychiatrist Explores the Minds of Killers. Fuming at the guests who appeared before her on Larry King’s show last Friday, she admonished them not to challenge the sniper. ‘‘You don’t challenge,’’ she told the other panelists. ‘‘You don’t say, ‘You’re a coward,’ you don’t say, ‘You’re not a good sniper,’ because that’s an invitation to go out and prove that he’s the world’s best sniper.’’As the carnage has mounted, media coverage of the sniper attacks has come under the usual criticisms. Some argue that the media is only fuelling public fear. Others, in law enforcement, are furious at media disclosures of information such as the location of roadblocks.There are even complaints about the logos networks are using. Like CNN’s Sniper on the Loose. But what distinguishes the sniper case from earlier serial murders where the killer appeared to be following coverage of his spree is that the coverage is now continuous. ‘‘It’s agonising,’’ said Frank Sesno, CNN’s former Washington bureau chief and now a professor at George Mason University in Virginia. ‘‘Typically what serial killers want is notoriety. This guy is getting it live.’’ Media executives defend their choices. ‘‘It’s laying a bit too much on the media to say we’re provoking him,’’ said Teya Ryan, executive vice president of CNN. ‘‘We’re doing our best to report the story honestly.’’Further, some defending the media note that so-called talking heads are not the only ones talking. President Bush also called the killer’s actions cowardly, and his words were widely broadcast. Glassner, a risk analyst, calculates that pedestrians have a greater possibility of being hit by a car than by a sniper. Yet the randomness of his bullets, coupled with the saturation media coverage, contributes to a heightened fear. Whatever the criticisms, the reign of terror is boosting ratings for cable news networks. At the end of last week, Fox News Channel’s average daily audience was up 27 pc from the previous month, CNN was up 29 pc and MSNBC, 24 pc.(LATWP)
