Dear Media, Stop Naming the Shooter.

As soon as I heard about the Paris attacks, I felt for the families and friends of the victims — felt so hard, I was in tears. As news unfolded in the subsequent days, I began to see a trend. While I was able to find the names of some of the victims and a few highlighted stories of their lives lost of my own accord, my tears shifted to anger.

When I went to search “Paris,” countless headlines named the terrorist. In. the. headline. Naming the terrorist is bad enough, but in a headline? These men do not deserve to die in infamy.

Looking back on tragedies and attacks in history, I quickly began to realize that I could think of more shooters and terrorists in our history than victims. The name of the Oklahoma City bomber. The shooters at Columbine. The leader of Al-Qaeda. The Sandy Hook killer. The names of all of these people come to mind quickly, but I could not name one victim. I thought to myself, “well, maybe it’s my fault — maybe I read the wrong articles, or focused too much on the wrong thing.”

Nope.

I began to Google attacks in history, and was shocked at the results. The first thing one sees on Wikipedia is the name of the killer, news sources put their names in the headline, and the social media pages and images of the killers are showcased. Finding names and photos of victims, however, is much more difficult.

This is giving the killers what they want. They want to die in infamy and be remembered for their horrid acts. And we are giving them what they want.

All victims should be remembered for the lives they lived and the people they left behind too soon due to cowardly acts.

Please join me in remembering the victims. Starting with Paris, these are some of the names that should be in headlines, and the ones we should remember:

• Arianne Theiller
• Anne and Pierre-Yves Guyomard
• Gilles Leclerc
• Djamila Houd
• Thomas Ayed
• Marie Mosser

…And countless other souls.

Dear Media, please stop giving the killers what they want. Take their names and photos out of your stories, and replace them with the names and stories of those gone too soon.