In the wake of the shootings at Virginia Tech, I must admit: We in the media dropped the ball.
Rather than simply allowing the story to unfold, which it would have done with or without our guidance, media, and specifically our colleagues in television journalism, didn’t make the right calls when it came to jarring images and sound clips of Seung-Hui Cho’s “manifesto.”
While those pieces of “news” were interesting to some, the manner in which they were released did nothing but irritate the situation.
There are going to be times when the media’s role in our society is a tenuous one. There are going to be times when we are entrusted to do what is right, not what is easy. But easy and right are normally completely different things and center on completely opposite ideas. Generally speaking, the former offers what we want while the latter doesn’t.
In our business, information is paramount. But all too often we let the quest for providing that information get subjugated by the need to stroke our own egos and help ourselves. Whether we asked for the responsibility or not, there’s an inherent need in our country for media to act appropriately.
Had the decision makers at rivals CBS or ABC been in the position of NBC’s executives, they too would have most likely released Cho’s contributions, sadly enough.
Granted, they — much as NBC did — would have quickly come out and changed their tunes the following day, but that would’ve been after the rush.
As the saying goes, it’s much easier to ask forgiveness than to ask permission.
As someone who has always been interested in the nuts and bolts of government, I was drawn to this business because of the light it can, and does, shine on matters which otherwise would’ve simply passed many of us by. After all, there are things people need to know.
Doing what is right, though, flies in the face of ratings. Doing what is easy, in most instances, flies in the face of what’s proper.
Was there anything in Cho’s release that aided the American public or specifically the families of victims in making the picture any less hazy? Was there any material, despite the obvious signs of a severely ill person, that makes this any better? And was there anything in the overly-saturated, wall-to-wall coverage that helped five or six days after?
What we should’ve done was report the facts, get to the bottom of who was hurt and how, and shared the stories of heroism—the students who pretended to be fatally injured so they could escape alive or the teachers who sacrificed themselves for their students.
What we shouldn’t have done was stay on the Blacksburg campus until a full week had passed after the shootings.
It’s our job to report the news, not to create it or to hope it happens. Those that stayed behind in the hills of southwest Virginia did so hoping another angle would develop.
Too often, especially in times of crisis, we cover it to the extreme and put people in a fish bowl who don’t deserve it. Sometimes, we need to understand that over-coverage is as bad as no coverage.
In this instance, while not every news outlet or genre went astray, many did. And for that, even I am sorry.
