Winterset Superintendent Michael Gates said in a Des Moines Register article on Tuesday he blamed the media for the bomb threat his school received on May 19. As Gates would tell it, the recent rash of prank bomb calls and threats of violence here in central Iowa and around the nation are only perpetuated when news outlets report these utterly stupid acts of immaturity.

There are at least two reasons why that is a whole-heartedly, idiotic notion.

The assumption in blaming the media for this whole mess is that these moronic high-schoolers calling in the threats actually read newspapers or watch the news on TV. Studies have shown time and again that young people do less of both of those activities every year, and those that do are probably not the ones calling in the threats in the first place.

If newspapers and TV don’t report bomb threats, what good are they? The point of a free press is to keep the public informed and to ensure democracy. Bomb threats are news, and that is all there is to the argument.

If, by some chance, the news affects certain elements of the population in a way that does cause harm to society, the media cannot be held at fault. This isn’t the Jerry Springer show.

No one sensationalized these threats by taking the principal of the school and putting them on stage with the thug who did the calling in an attempt to get them to beat each other over the head with chairs.

If the media were to stop reporting about bomb threats because it might pollute the precious minds of our young, we would be stepping on a very slippery slope .

Media report the way our world is and the events happening in this world, even if those events happen to be atrocious. In a perfect world, reporting those terrible facts wouldn’t entice others to take part in the same shenanigans. Even if they do, the media cannot ignore their responsibility. To do that would be far more dangerous that a few extra bomb threats.