Aftermath of the Virginia Tech massacre

[fpb]

So the murderous moron who killed 32 innocent people because he felt like it sent a video detailing his rotten little excuses before he did the only right thing and killed himself. All right. But can anyone give me any reason why TV and radio news broadcasts should subject us to extensive excerpts from his ugly screed, from which we can draw neither education nor pleasure?

Comments

[patchworkmind.livejournal.com]

Because they can't, so they won't let anyone else, look away from a train wreck, because "it's news" and "the public have a right to know." Nevermind if folks don't want to exercise that alleged right at the whim of others. This whole affair doesn't surprise me, though. You know my opinion of the press.

[lazy-neutrino.livejournal.com]

In the USA - because it will attract viewers, which pleases advertisers. Over here, I don't know. Because if they don't, the competition will?

I don't know. If I think something is in poor taste, I turn it off. For example, I don't watch any reality shows. Listening only to Radio 4 makes life a little easier, but either their standards are slipping or I am growing old.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Oh, I turn it off too. At once. It was just that the very fact that it was placed on the news disgusted me, even though I could turn it off. They wasted time that could have been given to something useful, or even to some stupid cute fluffy story about animals.

[super-pan.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure what purpose it serves(besides lazy neutrino's point about advertisers) to show these images. Reading about them is more than enough.
They said the decision to air them was debated and pondered upon, but it seems like not showing something isn't really a viable option anymore.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

If it was debated and pondered upon, then that proves ani_bester's point, below, that journalists have a different idea of what "integrity" means. And if it is true that all the people within the industry have a similar blind spot about decency and integrity, then for them to discuss it among themselves amounts to nothing more than a reinforcement mechanism for their own diseased morality. They would do better to get out of their buildings and put the question to old Jack, the wino who panhandles at forty-fourth and seventh; they would be more likely to get a sane answer.

[ani-bester.livejournal.com]

Because news as a form of information has long since died out. It made as tiny little comeback from the yellow journalism of the early 20th cent. but it's all back to that now.
There is no "news" only entertainment, and this is the modern version of a public execution.

And because journalists assumes that freedom of speech somehow means they have the right to show whatever they want morality and consequences and human decency be damned.

And because journalists must have a different definition of the word "integrity" *sigh*

Really, what I think is a huge issue is the news no longer wants to report that want to dictate. They want to tell people what to think about issues, hence all the pundits and such constening babeling on the news shows. It might not be so bad if they were looking at big pictures like why in America the youth culture is such that someone *can* do what the shooter did.

But instead, they're just gonna look at why that specific shooter did what he did and blame whatever they have a personal beef against, so really all the "analyzation" passed off a news is utlimately empty and useless and only an excuse for exploitation and titliation. >_<

Or at least that's how I've begun to feel these days.
I remember trying to figure out how to cote this last election, and I finale gave up with "news" to figure the canidates out and jsut went straight for the congressional records and started reading the speeches the canidates actually made and that was *WAY* more informative.

[redcoast.livejournal.com]

It was predictable.

[redcoast.livejournal.com]

And you know what? All of Cho's stuff is boring and cliche. That's what strikes me the most about madness; it's not interesting, creatively.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

That abuts on my point. There is nothing to be learned - at least, by the ordinary person - from this "document". A conference of psychiatrists might usefully study it, but most people are not psychiatrists, and cannot expect to take an interest in the evidence of mental illness, which is mostly very boring. It satisfies a very trivial curiosity, one that has probably died within a minute of the start of the tape, and does not even heighten our disgust at the moron himself - the very knowledge of what he did should have been enough for any sane person to know what to think and what to feel.

[secularhermites.livejournal.com]

The media only cares about one thing: ratings. - sad to say, they got it.

[dirigibletrance.livejournal.com]

So... just don't watch the broadcasts. That simple.

I've been reading "A Knight of the Word" the past two days, and I had no idea that they were even playing video excerpts until you mentioned it here.

The media isn't forcing you to do anything. You always have the option of turning off the television. An option that I highly recommend, by the way. It's worked wonders for me.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

As I said upthread, I took that option eagerly. Do not imagine that I watched that abomination one second more than I had to. I am nevertheless disgusted at their behaviour.

[dirigibletrance.livejournal.com]

You know, I'm also a little bit dissappointed in you that you simply call Cho a "murderous moron". There's alot more too it than that.

The guy was messed up, seriously. He was mentally ill. I've read a little bit about the guy now in the last day or so, and he showed signs of this kind of behavior from even early in life. He was, according to doctors that have reviewed the case and been interviewed anyway, a classic psychopath, who very likely had a biochemical imbalance. He didn't just up and decide to to kill a bunch of people one day. He'd been mentally crippled for most of his life.

He shouldn't have even been out on the streets, at all. The US mental health system, and justice system, utterly failed here. We failed to get a guy who was seriously ill the help he needed, and we also failed to keep a potential threat to public safety contained and away from access to weaponry. I have no idea how the frickin judge who reviewed his case a year ago only concluded that he was "a danger to himself" when the guy was taking photographs of female students in his classes and then turning in creative writing stories about butchering them all. That seems like a pretty cut-and-dry "danger to self *and others*" situation. He shouldn't have even been on the VT campus that day, but instead in a mental ward, on medication, with a reinforced door or two between him and the outside world.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I grant your point. I am a member of the disabled movement and I regard Cho's treatment as abominable. However, this only reinforces my view that the media had no business broadcasting his screed; quite apart from the effect on victims and relatives, it just means handing yet another victory to his disease.