If you've been following the news lately, you are probably familiar with the "sniper" and his violent rampage throughout the Washington, D.C. area. What happened during the course of October was very serious; many people were killed or seriously injured. Some parents were afraid to send their children to school. One school in Montgomery County had a state trooper patrolling the parking lot. Maryland Governor Paris Glendening considered calling out the National Guard to protect voters if the sniper was not found before Election Day.Despite the seriousness of these fears, the media sensationalized the sniper shootings and glorified him as some great villain in a crime drama. This is particularly disturbing after the sniper left a letter declaring among other things, "I am God." Thumbs up to the media for putting a serial killer with a superiority complex on the cover of major newspapers and magazines.

In addition to the sensational and glorified news headlines, we have also been bombarded with a running commentary by so-called "experts" trying to analyze the psychological condition of the sniper and how well the police are dealing with the case. Mark Jurkowitz of the Boston Globe put it nicely when in an Oct. 23 article, he said, "The open-season commentary . is one more sign that this story has morphed into one of those frenzied cable news sagas . Most of all, we get the parade of commentators who fill the chasm between press conferences and real news with a stream of speculation, interpretation, and, sometimes, information." In an age of 24-hour cable news stations, the media responds to a lack of real information with often baseless speculation showing little regard for the magnitude of its implications.

We usually expect the press to be more concerned with selling newspapers and magazines than accurately and tastefully representing real events. Examples of this in the past decade include the O.J. Simpson trial and the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal. Yet, what happened recently in the D.C. area was considerably more serious and ought to have been reported and portrayed that way. According to an Oct. 23 Reuters article, the sniper has been called, "the man who took America hostage" in Paris and "Spookschutter" (meaning, "ghost shooter") in Amsterdam. It's even possible that the sniper was partially motivated by these titles and headlines that sound like something out of an old crime movie.

According to the Jurkowitz's Globe article, "MSNBC's Whitcomb said that 'he obviously fantasizes himself to be the sniper in the classic sense . having that sense of secrecy and anonymity.'" Now that we have such "expert" analysts, shouldn't we change our reporting style accordingly? Instead, the television news stations and newspapers continued to portray the sniper exactly as he wanted to be portrayed.

In addition, most of the speculations during the investigation have been less than accurate. I heard one commentator claim that the sniper is probably white and that he is not Muslim because his use of the word "God" would be considered sacrilegious. As it turns out, the prime suspect now is a black man who was a bodyguard for Louis Farrakhan during the Million-Man March.

Even today, as I write this, ex-cops and psychological profilers are still speculating as to the sniper's motives before the prosecution team has yet to release information that might confirm any such claims.

I hope the victims' families are not offended by the frivolous speculation on such serious matters. I offer them my condolences.