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The tragic murder of a dozen people in a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado has not, for the most part, been tied to the supposedly pernicious effects video games have on society. But Fox News's website just found a connection. And it's a stretch.
In a piece about the case today, Fox News explores the background of Dr. Lynne Fenton, the psychiatrist to whom the killer sent a notebook describing his plans for a shooting (the notebook was found, undelivered, in a mailroom after the shooting).
The story also includes contributions from the Associated Press, but it is Fox that stresses the Fenton angle and shares this non-sequitur in its description of Fenton's background:
On May 30, 2012, Fenton and two graduate students presented a Student Health Case Conference talk called "World of Warcraft: The Use of Archetypes in Psychotherapy" during the university's psychiatry department's grand rounds. World of Warcraft was reportedly one of the video games that James Holmes frequently played.
Previously, the Reuters news service had reported this from a college research assistant who had seen the killer at the University of Colorado:
"Sometimes during the lab when he was supposed to be reading a paper or something like that, I would see him playing online role-playing video games, like World of Warcraft, League of Legends," he said, but nothing to suggest any serious violent tendencies.
And the Daily Mail had reported this, quoting a classmate:
"James was obsessed with computer games and was always playing role-playing games.
'I can't remember which one but it was something like World of Warcraft, one of those where you compete against people on the internet."
Not much of a connection, it seems, unless you're trying to make one.
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