Letter | Using ‘evil’ to describe shootings is shallow

Published 10:41 am Wednesday, December 26, 2012

The massacre at Newtown was a tragic event, [and is] not appropriately called evil. Just calling the perpetrator evil, as some news has done, is at risk of being simplistic.

A killer might be considered evil if another’s life is taken for the benefit of the perpetrator. Even so, there may be moral and religious justification for it. An evil-good dichotomy is a thoughtless explanation of the shooting and delays significant solution to the problem.

The ready use of “evil” by the news media reflects a cultural shallowness nowadays pervasive.

Lloyd Gilman