The U.S. government has inflated reports of school shootings, and thus, the media has contributed to biased, fake news. government can make it confusing to report minor incidents, and how the media can take these things and twist them into big deals.  

The first case of this happening is in Redan middle school in Georgia. According to this government database that a shooting has happened in school, when in reality it was just a pop gun went off on a bus, and that was reported as a school shooting and in this case  it wasn’t even the media’s fault.

Another example of something like this opened in the CRDC in Ventura County in Southern California when they had reported that 26 school shootings had happened in their school district the superintendent of the school district. "I think someone pushed the wrong button," said Jeff Davis, an assistant superintendent there. The outgoing superintendent, Joe Richards, "has been here for almost 30 years and he doesn't remember any shooting," Davis added. "We are in this weird vortex of what's on this screen and what reality is."  It was more the fact that incident report process is very confusing and not clear to make a report like this so sometimes it can be the fault of the actual government which can be unsettling. By making this process confusing there contributing to fake new because new sources will get there evidence from these sites then report on them

In addition to the government skewing news, the media is also responsible for contributing to fake news.. A lot of these stories are considered staples for mainstream media, they get attention, clicks, and more and more coverage, and get the prime time spots. So you can probably understand why they would do this.  The exact number of school shootings is truly unknown because as you can tell that a lot of thing happen during the report process so it’s hard to tell, but you can say that they are extremely rare, but the amount of coverage in the media it will seem that it’s happening much more frequently than it actually is. Why this happens is because it gets the most views and traction which means they get more money.

Moreover, when the media inflates the number of school shootings, then the causes of school shootings also becomes misinterpreted some come to the conclusion that its mental health which I agree with the most, or violent video games(University of York. "No evidence to support link between violent video games and behavior." ScienceDaily., 16 January 2018.)  however there has been no studies to confirm that there is any correlation between the two, one thing I think that is happening is that a lot of these school shooter already have   some sort of mental issue, and how the media almost glorifies them by plastering they’re face and story all over the media which a lot of these people want attention so you can see how that could be a problem

In conclusion the media can can over report on stories misrepresent what a mental health is, and can sometimes take what the government reports at face value and not doing all the good research, and the government can make it to complicated to report simple things . the next step from here is making sure the the press knows what they're doing revising some of the government systems to report incidents and helping people with mental health