BY now, many of you have probably seen the video from beyond the grave of the perpetrator of the Virginia Tech massacre, Cho Seung-hui, who turned out to have mailed a suicide video and digital photo album to NBC. And if you haven’t seen it on TV, you might have viewed it on YouTube or other sites.
This appalling suicide video is already an Internet hit, and all you have to do is Google it.
Which brings us to the question: Should the media have given this killer this kind of airtime? What message is media sending to would-be killers, terrorists and other megalomaniacs who dream of this kind of mileage when they commit atrocities?
It’s a question posed in this Guardian Unlimited article.
Excerpt:
The news value of this stuff was irresistible to NBC despite any qualms about its impact on the survivors and the bereaved, not to mention any future spree killers.
All news organisations in the UK have followed suite and they, like NBC, will all see massive spikes in their internet traffic.
In the end, I don’t think news organisations had much choice about showing the material but the implications are quite scary.
Cho’s motivation may never be fully understood but he certainly recognised the power of digital media. His massacre at Virginia Tech may be remembered as the first YouTube killing spree.
Is this what the world is coming to? In the age of reality TV and tabloid news, have we desensitized ourselves, and are there no more limits to what the media will show in the name of “news”?
How low will media go in the name of ratings and scoops?
April 25th, 2007 at 1:45 pm
i have read a comment(on the internet) that if the videos were sent to other media or news outfit other than NBC, they would also do what the NBC did by showing it to the world.
what can be more surprising with that? the video of the murderer is really a news!
i think if the video showed how cho(the killer)cursed south korea, his hometown or blaming his ownself for insanity, american people will be asking for multiple replays of the video.
but in contrast and reality, cho(the killer) blame the (american) rich kids and their luxurius way of life and then how the newly bought gun was displayed on the video (which somehow an attack to the american gun culture) was shown on the video.
philippines is no stranger in this kind of news. remember the hostage taker who killed the 4-year old boy on a bus depot some few years ago. the scene on how the mad man killed dexter balala was shown on national tv stations (with blurred images)
http://josepherdon.blogspot.com/2007/04/misery-lunacy-stupidity.html
April 20th, 2007 at 11:17 pm
I was equally horrified by the news of the seven beheading victims in the RP, the youngest being sixteen and seventeen.
It’s all news, news, news and should be reported uncensored. If there is any good to come from such horrors, it may be that it will motivate those among us who are capable of effecting change for the better, to take action.
Richard Jones
Alberta
Canada.
April 20th, 2007 at 2:02 pm
And just how would Mr. Alarilla have the media sector be reformed? Should we reintroduce censorship? From now on, news should only be upbeat, focus only on the positive side of life, and reduce reports of such tragedies to one-liners on the newspapers’ back page? We don’t want to make celebrities of homicidal lunatics, so let’s ignore them. Maybe they will go away if we do.
10 million peple were murdered by Hitler during World War II and the media scarcely reported on the Holocaust while it was underway. Did that make Hitler say “gee, no one seems to be watching, so what’s the point? I guess I’ll stop?”
I feel for the victims at Virginia Tech, but let us not shoot the messenger for bringing the bad news.
April 20th, 2007 at 1:43 pm
I think there are a lot of limits to what the media is willing to show. I was following up the massacre of 10 or 11 innocent bystanders by US marines on a convoy in Nangarhar, Afghanistan. It was interesting because it seemed a couple of Marines went amok when their convoy was hit by a suicide bomber although only one US marine was injured. After the breaking news item, no other news followed it. Whitewash? US Marines seem to snap more easily given the number of atrocities in Iraq they were involved in.
April 19th, 2007 at 10:36 pm
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