Think about all of the past mass shootings and bombings over the past few years: in a Colorado movie theater, at a Newtown, Ct. school, on the streets of Boston during its marathon, at the Washington D.C. Navy Yard.

James Holmes, Adam Lanza, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Aaron Alexis, the perpetrators of these crimes, have become names that seem all too familiar.  Many of them got incredible amounts of attention, with their faces on magazine covers and the TV news every night.

But here’s a question:  How many of their victims can you name?

Why is this? Because the media focuses most of the attention on the shooters rather than the victims.  Shouldn’t we be remembering the fatalities of these tragedies rather than the ones who orchestrated them?

It is the media’s job to deliver information to the public, therefore reporting to them about the killer, but there comes a point when they take it too far. While watching the coverage of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, an image of Adam Lanza was staring back at me on the screen for minutes straight. This should not be the case. Instead, these stations should focus on the deceased and their families.

It may be hard to look at continuous photos of those whose lives were cut so short, but it is more honorable for the media stations to be paying tribute to the victims rather than the killers.

The station’s constant showing of the murderer glorifies him in a way and makes him a celebrity, a face and name everybody will remember.

When Rolling Stone released the cover of its August issue, the public was outraged to see a picture of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev looking like a rock star. The cover made this villain look like a celebrity everyone would want to know, as the cover of Rolling Stone is supposed to do. CVS, Walgreens and other retailers refused to sell the August issue in honor of the victims.

“What we’re going to say is, a coward walked into a movie theater and started shooting people. He’s apprehended. The coward’s in jail. He will never see the light of day again. Let’s move onto the victims. Never talk to him again,” Tom Teves pleaded after his son was killed at the Colorado movie theater shooting.

CNN’s Anderson Cooper took that step to stop saying the shooter’s name. Following the tragedy in Colorado he used words like “suspect”, or “accused killer”.

“Obviously my primary role is to report and be a journalist and tell people as much as possible,” he said. “I think people know that person’s name. They certainly know it by now and they’ve certainly seen the pictures over and over again, “said Cooper.

I was only three years old in 1999 when the Columbine shooting happened, therefore I know little about it, but what I do know is that the killers were two high school students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. What is sad is that these two names are the first thing that comes to mind, and I have not a clue about one victim’s name.

There is always a blurred line with journalistic ethics, but there comes a point when the media needs to show some sympathy and not make murders into celebrities.

We should be remembering the victims rather than the villains.