Virginia Tech Redux: Did the Old Media Lose it in Blacksburg?

<p>April 18th, 2007</p>
<p>As the words continue to flow along with the tears after the deaths at Virginia Tech, one important observation rises above the ruins: the incident represented a triumph for what the pundits term the New Media over the Old. The keys to this triumph lie in the strengths of the New Media: its immediacy, diversity, and ability to speak personally.</p>
<p>The immediacy of the New Media put them far ahead of the Old Media even as the crisis unfolded. The on-campus emails that first informed many students that something terrible had happened became like pebbles dropped in a pond, rippling out into the ether. New Media such as Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and search engines became the preferred sources for people desperate to find out what happened. Probably the most dramatic illustration of this was the group of students who fled to the library and then frantically searched the Internet to find out what was happening. A decade ago they might have turned on the radio or television.</p>
<p>Even the Old Media had to acknowledge the role the New Media played for the students at Virginia Tech. CBS ran a <a target="_blank" href="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/04/17/the_skinny/main2693331.shtml">story</a> "Students Turn To Web In Time Of Tragedy" whose sub head read, "How the Internet Helped Va. Tech Students Cope with Shooting Massacre." The <em>Los Angeles Times</em> <a target="_blank" href="http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-fi-web17apr17,1,3926754,full.story?coll=la-headlines-frontpage">reported </a>about University of Southern California sophomore Charlotte Korchak who instead of using a cellphone to check on friends at Virginia Tech, immediately went to Facebook.</p>
<blockquote>"I was able to immediately find out who was OK," she said. "Without Facebook, I have no idea how I would have found that out."</blockquote>
<p>As for the news on campus, the Old Media struggled to catch up. National Public Radio even published a desperate-sounding plea on their web site for witnesses of the tragedy to please contact them so they could line up interviews. In short, in the first few hours after the shootings the Old Media became just like the rest of us, searching the web for information and answers.</p>
<p>Later National Public Radio would <a target="_blank" href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/talk/index.html">gloat</a>, its words a bit of an unnecessary distortion (i.e. many bloggers), on the misinformation posted on some blogs. Referring to a Wired post the NPR blog stated:</p>
<blockquote>Wired reports that many bloggers originally <a href="http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/04/internet_names_.html">misidentified the shooter</a> in yesterday&#39;s rampage at Virginia Tech, linking to "to the LiveJournal blog of a particular 23-year-old gun nut in Virginia." It turned out that this person was not connected to the shootings.</blockquote>
<p>However, the zealotry of some blogging wingnuts pales beside the old media&#39;s inability to even get the name of the institution correct. Most of them resorted to the shorthand Virginia Tech. It wasn&#39;t until a day after the shootings that the New York Times published the official name of the school-Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. As for misidentifying the killer, there were also many false reports in the Old Media, which at one time speculated the shootings at the two different buildings might not be related.</p>
<p>Others in the Old Media recognized the role the New Media played in getting the story out. The Los Angeles Times <a target="_blank" href="http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-fi-web17apr17,1,3926754,full.story?coll=la-headlines-frontpage&ctrack=1&cset=true">admitted</a>:</p>
<blockquote>Members of the most wired generation in history dealt with Monday&#39;s bloody rampage by connecting on blogs, Facebook and other websites. Their eyewitness descriptions, photos and video made the trauma unfolding in the rural Virginia town immediate and visceral to millions.</blockquote>
<p>The Hartford Courant also <a target="_blank" href="http://www.courant.com/chi-0704160582apr17,0,7614531,print.story">acknowledged</a>:</p>
<blockquote>the most arresting coverage from Virginia Tech came from citizen journalists who went to work well before the media could grasp the massacre&#39;s full scope.</blockquote>
<p>The reliance of the Old Media on the New gave rise to a host of stories with the following disclaimer, "[this network, newspaper, radio station] is not responsible for the content of external Internet sites." Those in the Old Media who won out in the rush to tap into local sources were those like CNN who have consciously solicited the work of citizen journalists. The Hartford Courant <a target="_blank" href="http://www.courant.com/chi-0704160582apr17,0,7614531,print.story">pointed out</a> student Jamal Albarghouti, whose cell phone camera pictures were among the first of the massacre:</p>
<blockquote>Was one of more than 100 so-called I-Reporters to submit Virginia Tech content to CNN. Once CNN realized what it had, it paid him an undisclosed amount of money for exclusivity, limiting other networks to no more than 10 seconds of the clip.</blockquote>
<p>Some students became weary of all the attention as the Old Media desperately searched for someone, anyone who could give them an interview. One Virginia Tech blogger (in keeping with his request to limit intrusions I will not link to his site here but a secondary source) <a target="_blank" href="http://blogher.org/node/18346">wrote</a>:</p>
<blockquote>As of the time I am writing this I have done a radio interview with BBC and talked with a reporter from the LA Times. CBC Newsworld, the Boston Herald, Current TV, and MTV have asked for interviews and further information. As I said I intend to share my experiences with everyone, but I want to reinstate that I am just an average student and I don&#39;t want to be made into something I am not.</blockquote>
<p>The Old Media have no one but themselves to blame for not having reporters near the scene. For more than two decades they have been furiously pursuing a policy that has concentrated radio and television stations and newspapers into fewer and fewer hands. The changes in media concentration first proposed by the FCC in 2003 essentially would have allowed a single company to control almost half of all broadcasting stations and, more important, two companies could control 90%. It also raised the caps on how many local stations could be controlled by a single company and widened the ability of companies to engage in cross-media ownership within a single market.</p>
<p>What this has meant is the steady decline of local media and the Old Media. An online check of Blacksburg showed that essentially Virginia Tech itself was probably the main local media. <a target="_blank" href="http://www.city-data.com/city/Blacksburg-Virginia.html">City-data.com</a> lists five radio stations actually in Blacksburg. One of them is owned by a national chain, Capstar TX Limited Partnerships and three are owned by what seem to be regional corporations. Only one appears to be locally owned - the FM station owned by Virginia Tech.</p>
<p>This leaves the networks and newspapers without any local media they can instantly tap into. They have to rely on the Internet just like the rest of us. In essence the networks have no one to call. This phenomenon is happening all over the country as local media voices disappear forever. In <em>The Strange Death of Liberal America</em> I wrote:</p>
<blockquote>Control of local markets by national conglomerates gives local citizens little information about their own community. In a way, many towns become . . . [media] ghost towns with only tumbleweeds howling through them and their vibrant down towns boarded up. Along with the loss of local voices comes the loss of venerable institutions like the broadcasts of the local sports teams, local personalities dishing out tips on canning this year�s tomato crop, and that lifeblood of many rural communities, the recitation of the current commodity prices. In a sense, conglomerates such as Clear Channel not only make people anonymous, they also make their communities anonymous.</blockquote>
<p>The New Media have helped to fill this gap, rushing into the vacuum created by the loss of local voices. As the <em>Washington Post</em> <a target="_blank" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/16/AR2007041601834.html?hpid=topnews">noted,</a></p>
<blockquote>Blacksburg, lead by Virginia Tech, is home to the Blacksburg Electronic Village, a pioneering project launched in the mid-&#39;90s that sought to link everyone in an online community. A Reader&#39;s Digest headline in 1996 called Blacksburg "The Most Wired Town in America."</blockquote>
<p>For Blacksburg, replacing the Old Media with the New was a move that, as we have seen, paid off during the massacre. It is difficult to speculate what the consequences of the shootings would have been without the New Media, but clearly on the Virginia Tech campus alone, the New Media performed a variety of crucial functions in linking fellow Hokies. If we then move to the level of the friends and family of those at Virginia Tech, without the New Media they might have suffered a great deal more agony. An online <em>Post link </em><a target="_blank" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/16/AR2007041601834.html?hpid=topnews">observed</a>,</p>
<blockquote>Friends and family embrace the New Media to get the message out.</blockquote>
<p>It was in the second and third areas - the personal and the diverse - that the New Media really excelled. The Internet allowed those at Virginia Tech and those with close ties to it to quickly link to one another and form an online community of grief. For the rest of us the Internet performed a similar function as blogs, chatrooms, online audio and video allowed us to link with each other and to those at Virginia Tech.</p>
<p>Now that the Old Media finally have their satellite trucks in place and have flown down their big name reporters to Blacksburg, they again appear in control. Once again their pious pronouncements and portentous analysis fill the airwaves. They desperately want to tell us how to think and feel about this tragedy. They seem almost eager to fill in the missing whys.</p>
<p>The Old Media still have not learned an old lesson, one as old as the Kennedy Assassination, that event that was their first national moment, the first time they had us all glued to the glowing screens. Then they kept their voices soft and restrained and let the pictures tell the story.</p>
<p>Now the Old Media broadcast events like the Virginia Tech shootings as if they were sports contests complete with the play-by-play person talking too much by telling us what we are seeing along with the resident experts pontificating about what it all means. And of course they manage to sign up a few "witnesses" who soon become THE voices of the tragedy-and, of course, each network tries to get exclusive contracts with them, trampling over the poor students in their zeal to find the most articulate, photogenic and dramatic. Then they ask the inevitable question, whether for the NCAA Final Four winner or a student at Virginia Tech is: "How do you feel?"</p>
<p>In contrast in the New Media, as the cliche goes, everyone can be themselves. Instead of pat answers and telegenic witnesses you find reality. We all know reality can be chaotic, it can be messy and it can be downright obnoxious. It has no pat answers, no resident experts and no one cares what you look like or sound like or even if you are articulate. In the New Media there is the feeling that anyone close to such a tragedy who sounds articulate is suspect.</p>
<p>The power of the New Media lies in its diversity. But what makes it powerful also has its dark side. You will find no shortage of rantings in various blogs that put even Fox News to shame. In fact right now unseemly discussions are raging all across the blogsphere like a tsunami of BS over who is to blame for this, whether we should or should not have gun control and the cryptic note the killer left behind.</p>
<p>But to have diversity we must be willing to accept the garbage along with the wisdom, even if sometimes it seems the smell of the garbage is enough to make you puke. if you are willing to hold your nose and look hard enough you will also find analysis that both moves you and provides you with more information and more unusual slants than you will ever find in the Old Media.</p>
<p>Clearly part of the attention and volume of comments the shootings have precipitated lies not merely with their horrific nature, but with the sense that many have that the massacre signaled something major had shifted in America. The seismic shock, the huge spike in online activity registered by blogs such as this one, signifies that a new world is being born, one in which the New Media have become the preferred means of communication and information. That the New Media are less reliable and more chaotic than the old has some people worried, especially in the Old Media.</p>
<p>In many ways the situation with media mirrors the murders at Virginia Tech, for just as the shootings now have made all of us a bit less certain about our safety, so have the New Media made us a bit less certain about our information. We have entered one of those uncertain and exciting times where an old world is dying and a new one is being born.</p>
<p>It may take a generation or two before the situation sorts itself out just as it did with previous media changes. As we weather these changes we need to remember that above all, the New Media is about connections and diversity, two things the Old Media lost sight of a long time ago.</p>
<p>So, in the days ahead I hope those of you who found this post will wander on to others. Above all, I hope you will make new connections, find interesting voices, and perhaps even bump into some uncomfortable ideas. For unlike the Old Media, the New Media is organic, almost a living thing, because it changes and evolves even as I write this.</p>
<p>Posted by liberalamerican</p>
<p>--</p>
<p>Original Source: <a href="http://thestrangedeathofliberalamerica.com/2007/04/18/virginia-tech-redux-did-the-old-media-lose-it-in-blacksburg/">http://thestrangedeathofliberalamerica.com/2007/04/18/virginia-tech-redux-did-the-old-media-lose-it-in-blacksburg/</a></p>
<p>Licensed under <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported</a>.</p>

Ralph Brauer

2007-06-08

Brent Jesiek

Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported

eng

Blacksburg, violence, and America

Published by <a href="http://davesmidlife.com/author/admin/">Dave </a> April 25th, 2007

I have been on the sidelines of quite a number of handgun deaths in my life. Thank God, I haven&#39;t really been in the crossfire, nor has any member of my family. But gun violence has come close enough to me to be very unsettling.

In the late 1980s, when I was a graduate student in German at Vanderbilt, a German exchange student, <a href="http://www.vanderbilt.edu/isss/weser_award.html">Thomas Weser</a>, was gunned down in a parking lot on campus in the very early morning hours. The murder seemed to be a robbery gone wrong. It became a murder because the mugger had a handgun.

On Christmas Eve 1991, I was living in the Belmont Heights section of Nashville, a cozy suburban neighborhood near several university campuses. My kids were very young. We got along well with our neighbors. There were families all around us.

Diagonally across the street from us lived two brothers. They got into an argument in the middle of the night after much alcohol had been drunk. One brother fetched a loaded handgun and killed the other. Without the loaded handgun in the house, this argument would probably have remained a drunken fistfight, maybe a stabbing.

In February of 1997, our family accompanied my wife on a weekend trip to New York City. My wife had to attend an arts conference, and I was left to explore the city with the kids. On Sunday afternoon we wanted to go to the observation deck of the Empire State Building, but we weren&#39;t sure whether we should wait until Mom got finished with her afternoon meeting. We decided that I would go ahead and take the kids up to the top while Barbara was in her session.

After we returned home to Northern Virginia, we learned that <a href="http://www.cnn.com/US/9702/24/empire.shooting/index.html">a man had opened fire</a> with a handgun on the Empire State Building&#39;s observation deck later that afternoon. Seven people were shot; one was killed, in addition to the gunman, who committed suicide. If we had waited for Barbara, we might well have been there to experience the shooting firsthand. <a href="http://www.cnn.com/US/9702/24/empire.shoot/">Republican Mayor Rudolph Giuliani blamed weak gun laws</a> for the rampage.

America&#39;s latest adventure in easily available firearms is, of course, the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Tech_massacre">massacre at Virginia Tech</a>. As I have <a href="http://davesmidlife.com/2007/04/18/blacksburg/">mentioned</a>, my wife and daughter, who had visited Blacksburg the day before, missed this one by about 18 hours.

The world press paid close attention to this shooting for a long time. It was front-page news in just about all the newspapers of the world for four or five days. As I write this, nine days after the attack, major papers in <a href="http://www.sueddeutsche.de">Germany</a>, <a href="http://derstandard.at/?id=2854321">Austria</a>, <a href="http://www.lemonde.fr/web/recherche_breve/1,13-0,37-986031,0.html">France</a>, and other countries are still reporting the aftermath.

The one thing the world press has emphasized, without exception, is their absolute bafflement at the U.S. gun laws-or lack thereof. We are the laughingstock of the world in this department. People from civilized countries around the world look at the apparent American fascination with guns and cluck in disapproving astonishment. The unifying theme is something like this: how can a great country such as the U.S., the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, continue to allow this to happen?

After all these years and decades, I cannot come up with an answer. The National Rifle Association seems to have our congressional legislators in a deathgrip. One mass murder happens after another, all carried out with handguns or assault rifles, and yet nothing changes.

The morning after the Virginia Tech shootings, I heard Washington Post sports reporter <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Feinstein">John Feinstein</a> on <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/wtwpradio/index.html">WTWP</a>. I wish I could find a transcript of his remarks. Essentially what he said was this: when gun owners and gun fans complain about the inconvenience or unfairness of having to register these deadly weapons, he is sick of hearing about it. Since 9/11 we have been subject to a series of ever more humiliating and inconvenient searches of our persons and property at airports. Nobody really complains, because that&#39;s just the way the world is.

Well, the world is also selling deadly handguns on the Internet to psychotic young men, who then commit mass murder. Couldn&#39;t we endure just a little inconvenience to combat such madness?

I am very angry now at our American stupidity. I am angry at the weak will of the majority of Americans who want stronger gun controls, yet who will not raise hell with their congressmen or senators about it. I am embarrassed to have to try to explain to my European friends and colleagues why Americans are still allowed to buy and carry handguns.

The <a href="http://www.gocomics.com/patoliphant/2007/04/19/">cartoonist Pat Oliphant</a> has captured my sense of befuddlement and rage.

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Original Source: <a href="http://davesmidlife.com/2007/04/25/blacksburg-violence-and-america/">http://davesmidlife.com/2007/04/25/blacksburg-violence-and-america/</a>

This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License</a>.

Dave Shepherd

2007-06-08

Brent Jesiek

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5

eng

Blacksburg

Published by <a href="http://davesmidlife.com/author/admin/">Dave</a> April 18th, 2007

This past weekend was the middle weekend of April. That&#39;s the time universities put on dog-and-pony shows for students who have been admitted, to help them make up their minds.

My daughter has been admitted to several universities, and she managed to narrow it down to James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia, and <a href="http://www.vt.edu/">Virginia Tech</a>. Somewhat at the last minute, she decided she needed to see both campuses to make her final decision.

So on Saturday she and my wife drove down to Blacksburg from our suburban DC home, about a four-hour trip. They stayed near Blacksburg and then spent Sunday in Tech&#39;s pre-orientation sessions.

Monday they had moved up Interstate 81 to JMU, but my daughter had pretty much decided that Tech was the place she wanted to attend. Standing on the campus Sunday, looking around, she began to see herself as a student there.

As I was walking back from the cafeteria in my high school on Monday, one of the Spanish teachers had his classroom TV on. There was a map of Virginia with the town of Blacksburg highlighted. I saw a graphic indicating "21 dead, 21 injured." It didn&#39;t take long for the news of the massacre to filter through, as well as the instruction from our administration that we were to keep TV sets off and not talk about the news in class.

Many students from our area attend Virginia Tech. It is one of the more competitive universities in the Virginia system. Hokie loyalty is more intense than that of alumni of other places. <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/17/AR2007041701132.html?hpid=topnews">Hokie pain is now intense</a>. To see Virginia Tech on the front page of all the world&#39;s newspapers because of a rampage that wiped out 33 young lives is deeply disturbing.

My daughter will probably still attend Tech next year. She realizes that Tech is the place she saw on Sunday, not the crazy-man-land it became on Monday. But it will always be unsettling to walk the campus where the worst shooting massacre in American history took place.

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Original Source: <a href="http://davesmidlife.com/2007/04/18/blacksburg/">http://davesmidlife.com/2007/04/18/blacksburg/</a>

This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License</a>.

Dave Shepherd

2007-06-08

Brent Jesiek

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5

eng

You vs. MSM in Va Tech Shooting Coverage

by <a href="http://members.nowpublic.com/brock">brock</a> | April 23, 2007 at 08:21 pm

As the terrible story of the shootings on the Virginia Tech campus began to unfold last week, the tens of thousands of moving pieces that make up the main stream media were kicked into high gear. The effort to get reporters "on the ground" and "in the face" of those on campus is startling in its breadth and depth.

As you see below, <b>the Washington Post threw no less than 75 reporters</b> at the story!! That is stunning. And when further reading the piece, <i>there was concern among the editors on the Post</i> because it was <i>too windy to charter a private plane to fly their reporters</i> to the Va Tech campus.

And then there was you, citizen journalist, crowd sourcing the story from any angle. NowPublic was fielding eye-witness accounts and sifting through rumors in real-time mode; ethical discussions about what information was appropriate to release and when (NowPublic had the name of the shooter&#39;s first victim very early on, perhaps before the main stream media knew) it was appropriate to do so.

The crew at NowPublic handled the chaos with grace and style and sensitivity and with more coolness and level heads than I&#39;ve seen in major newsrooms during breaking stories. And they did with a fraction of the resources at the command of media outlets like the Washington Post or NBC News. And they did a more than commendable job.

What&#39;s the point? Simply this: that effort couldn&#39;t have happened without <i><b>YOU</b></i>, the citizen journalist. I&#39;ve talked to many about citizen driven journalism or "crowd sourcing," whatever you want to call it, and many people I talk to ask "what&#39;s the use?" especially when there are places like the Washington Post throwing 75 people at the story. But that&#39;s exactly the point: with all the resources available to all of you, all of your friends and their friends... citizen journalism can be (should be) a force to be reckoned with. But it starts with you; <b>you gotta believe in this</b>... and then just jump in.

<b>Point, click...National News Story</b>

In a follow-on segment to this piece that I&#39;ll have in a couple of days, I&#39;m going to lay out to you a case-study in "How to Hack the Media," and by that I mean how you, sitting at home, in your office, in the park, at Starbucks or <i>on a beach in Nicaragua</i> can break a story and have the likes of CNN, the Los Angeles Times and FOX News all chasing after your story.

Yes, it&#39;s true and it&#39;s almost too easy. I&#39;ll lay it out for you step-by-step, complete with a fresh example, using the story I broke a couple of weeks ago while knocking back some local brews in the sleepy little fishing village of San Juan Del Sur, Nicaragua.

<i>Stay Tuned...</i>

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Original Source: Brock N. Meeks / NowPublic.com
<a href="http://www.nowpublic.com/you_vs_msm_in_va_tech_shooting_coverage">http://www.nowpublic.com/you_vs_msm_in_va_tech_shooting_coverage</a>

Brock N. Meeks

null

2007-06-07

Brent Jesiek

null

eng

too much coverage of the Virginia Tech tragedy

<b>April 19, 2007</b>

The amount of coverage has been staggering--dozens of stories per day in the top national newspapers, nightly broadcast news programs that are lengthened by half an hour, 24-hour repetitions of the same information on cable news, even a blow-by-blow account in the "Kid&#39;s Post" section of the <i>Washington Post</i>, which my 7-year-old reads. I first found out about the Blacksburg tragedy because a student TV news crew stopped me on the street to ask my opinion. This is a global phenomenon: <i>Le Monde</i> and the BBC also led with Cho Seung-hui&#39;s picture when I looked.

It&#39;s a choice to devote so much space and time to those 33 deaths. Bombers killed 158 in US-occupied Baghdad on Wednesday. Nigeria, the biggest country in Africa, saw violence connected to its presidential vote. Comparisons are odious; they imply that one doesn&#39;t care about <i>particular </i>victims and that human lives can be counted and weighed. I do sympathize with the Blacksburg victims and their families. I sympathize because I have been told their stories in detail; but there are many other stories that I could have been told--other tragedies, or (for that matter) other narratives that are important but not tragic.

Perhaps the Virginia Tech victims deserve sympathy from all of us, but I suspect they would prefer <i>less</i> attention. I find it hard to see how the deserve something they don&#39;t want.

One reason to tell the Virginia Tech story in detail is to provide us with the information we might need to act as voters and members of various communities. For instance, I work at a university much like Virginia Tech and could agitate for new policies in my institution. But it is generally a bad idea to act on the basis of extremely rare events. There have been about 40 mass shootings in the USA. During the period when those crimes have occurred, something like half a billion total people have been alive in America. That means that 0.000008 percent of the population commits mass shootings. There cannot be a general circumstance that explains why someone does something so rare. The availability of weapons, mental illness, video games--none of these prevalent factors can "explain" something that in 99.999992 percent of cases does <im>not</i> happen. (Bayes&#39; theorem seems relevant here, but I cannot precisely say why.)

It is foolish to use such rare events to make policy at any level--from federal laws to school rules. For instance, if lots of people carried concealed weapons, there is some chance that the next mass killer would be stopped after he had shot some of his victims. But millions of people would have to carry guns, and that would cause all kinds of other consequences. The day after the Blacksburg killings, two highly trained Secret Service officers <a href="http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,21577408-954,00.html">were injured</a> on the White House grounds because one of them accidentally discharged his gun. Imagine how many times such accidents would happen per year if most ordinary college students packed weapons in order to prevent the next Blacksburg.

The last paragraph was a rebuttal to those who want to use Cho Seung-hui as an argument for carrying concealed weapons. But it would be equally mistaken to favor gun <i>control </i>because it might prevent mass shootings. Maybe gun control is a good idea, but not because it would somewhat lower the probability of staggeringly rare events. Its other consequences (both positive and negative) are much more significant.

If obsessive coverage of a particular tragedy does not help us to govern ourselves or make wise policies, it does reduce our sense of security and trust. It reinforces our belief that "current events" and "public affairs" are mostly about senseless acts of violence. It plants the idea that one can become spectacularly famous by killing other people. These are not positive consequences.

It is moving that some students have started a "<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/19/arts/19scre.html">reach out to a loner</a>" campaign on the Internet. They are trying to respond constructively to something that they have been told is highly important. Imagine what they might accomplish if they turned their attention to the prison population, the high-school dropout problem, or even ordinary mental illness.

Posted by peterlevine at April 19, 2007 8:40 PM

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Original Source: <a href="http://www.peterlevine.ws/mt/archives/2007/04/too-much-covera.html">http://www.peterlevine.ws/mt/archives/2007/04/too-much-covera.html</a>

This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/">Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License</a>.

Peter Levine

2007-06-07

Brent Jesiek

Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5

eng

The vanity of reason: making sense of the Virginia Tech tragedy

Gene Koo - Thursday, April 19th, 2007 @ 5:52 pm

Soon after an initial outpouring of shock and grief at the senseless murder of 32 members of the Virginia Tech community, we began seeking explanations for the tragedy. By all accounts Seung-Hui Cho, perpetrator and 33rd victim of this rampage, was a severely disturbed young man; the snippets of video released so far by NBC reveal profound paranoia. Inevitably our questions turn to what would lead him to commit such a heinous crime. We yearn for insight into his motives. Why did he do it? What was he thinking?

These questions are familiar to me. I have asked them myself about my own mother, who probably developed paranoid schizophrenia some 15 years ago. I write "probably" because, like water filling a tub, the disease crept over her, imperceptibly, until suddenly it spilled forth in a flood. And somewhere in that tub, the loving woman who had been my mother drowned.

I cannot know, but looking at the face in the video aired by NBC, I would guess that the real Seung-Hui Cho, someone capable of the kind of laughter and anger you and I would understand, perished long before he pulled the trigger on himself.

People of sound mind often assume that individuals with mental illness think like we do: therefore, they must be misinformed, wrong-headed, or just pretending. We are, essentially, in denial. We delude ourselves into believing that we can figure these people out, and in so doing, learn how to "fix" them. In the first few years of my mother&#39;s illness, I challenged her claims that the "Chinese mafia" were spying on and stealing from her. Using lawyer&#39;s logic, I repeatedly demonstrated why it made no sense for criminals to go to such great lengths to inflict such petty wounds upon her.

She would always win these fights, because madness is not susceptible to reason. What I lacked in communicating with her was not logic, but rather imagination.

--

"Did you want to inject as much misery in our lives as you can," asks Mr. Cho in one video segment, "just because you can?" My mother asks these sorts of questions, too. She believes that clerks at the local store overcharge her and divert the money to her oppressors. Pedestrians stare at and spy on her. (The first part, at least, is now true due to her disheveled clothing and behavior). Vandals break into her home and move her papers around to prevent her from working. The invisible device in my ear tells her I am aiding and abetting "them."

These ludicrous accusations infuriated me, but my logical counterattacks could not breach the walls around her mind. Exhausted, I learned to stop fighting her reality and to accept that she truly believes what she says. Only through imagination - a willing suspension of disbelief - could I see her world.

A few years ago my mother was driving her brother around town when she unexpectedly pulled over so that the three black town cars following them would drive past. There was no one behind them, my uncle reports. But I no longer doubt that she indeed saw, in her mind, enemy agents in hostile pursuit.

--

In responding to the tragic massacre Mr. Cho wrought, the public seeks criminal intent, a "motive." The media presume they can understand and explain him; the FBI believes the hateful package sent to NBC will shed insight into his motivations. I have given up that quest. The search is vanity, a misplaced faith in reason.

Our criminal justice system assumes we can peer into mens rea, the criminal mind, and presumably extract thoughts and motives. Mental illness and the "insanity plea" have never fit well into this system because crimes committed by the mentally ill defy reason - and reason, it turns out, underlies our concept of justice. Like Job&#39;s entourage, our pundits and lawyers see tragedy and deduce the presence of sin. For if there is justice on Earth, then evil must have a logical human cause.

But we cannot seek solace in reason when dealing with mental illness. My mother is as logical as you or I, maybe more so. Her stratagems for thwarting the spies and thieves and vandals who plague her life are subtle, cunning, and carefully executed. The only piece out of place is that you and I cannot see these tormenters. They are entirely in her own mind.

--

Insanity is not stupidity, incompetence, or folly. Neither should we confuse it with evil. An important factor distinguishes my mother from Mr. Cho: while she manifests her paranoia through fear, he chose mass murder.

Or is "choice" a concept that we cannot ascribe to Mr. Cho? Perhaps one day science will answer that question, reveal the origins of madness, and demonstrate which faulty wires put voices in my mother&#39;s head, or what lethal mix of hormones induced Mr. Cho to massacre. Science may yet strip the fa���§ade of free will from every one of us, revealing nothing but seething masses of neurons. And we would be farther than ever from finding the source of evil.

Lawyers have a formula for calculating guilt that accounts for mitigations like provocation or insanity. That formula may be readjusted now and then, but its ultimate function is to balance the equation of justice and ensure that criminal debts are paid. But we cannot so easily cancel the pain we all feel when a man guns down innocents, or when a mother neglects her family. It is more than the pain of our immediate loss. We suffer because we are separated from mortal understanding; we have peered over the edge of reason and seen the whirlwind beyond.

--

Original Source: <a href="http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/anderkoo/2007/04/19/the-vanity-of-reason-making-sense-of-the-virginia-tech-tragedy/">Anderkoo - The vanity of reason</a>

Permissions: <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/">CreativeCommons-Attribution-Sharealike 2.5</a>

Gene Koo

2007-06-07

Sara Hood

CreativeCommons-Attribution-Sharealike 2.5

eng

Asian Identity of Virginia Tech Gunman

Tuesday, April 17th, 2007

By now, I&#8217;m sure everybody has heard of the tragedy that took place yesterday, Monday April 16, at Virginia Tech University. Words cannot adequately convey the profound shock and sadness that I feel about this unthinkable human catastrophe. As an educator, a parent -- as a human being -- I am struggling to come to grips with the enormity of what happened but at the least, I want to convey my deepest, most sincere condolences to everyone affected by these killings.

You may have also heard that gunman has been <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070417/ap_on_re_us/virginia_tech_shooting" target="_blank">officially identified</a> as an Asian American -- <strong>Seung-Hui Cho</strong>, a 23 year old senior English major at Virginia Tech who originally immigrated from South Korea in 1992.

The Associated Press article cited above notes that he was referred to school counselors after his instructors found his creative writing rather disturbing. The <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-070417vtech-shootings,1,176236.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed" target="_blank">Chicago Tribune</a> also reports that he apparently left a rambling suicide note that railed against &#8220;&#8216;rich kids,&#8217; &#8216;debauchery&#8217; and &#8216;deceitful charlatans&#8217; on campus&#8221; and that he had committed several strange and violent acts in recent weeks.

As a sociologist and Asian American Studies scholar, I will try to to put some sociological context into this horrific tragedy and several initial reactions come to mind:

If the gunman were White, his racial identity would go virtually unnoticed and unmentioned. However, because he was a person of color, much will probably be made of his racial identity. Specifically, because he was Asian American, much of the nation&#8217;s attention will be turned to examining what kinds of cultural characteristics may have influenced his behavior.

Also, inevitably, there will be some extreme reactions from xenophobes and people with anti-immigrant positions, perhaps along the lines of &#8220;This is what happens when we let in all kinds of immigrants, so we need to shut down our borders&#8221; or &#8220;We let in these damn foreigners and give them a chance at a better life and this is how they return the favor?&#8221; In addition, those who have anti-Asian sentiments are likely to say something like &#8220;Well, this just proves that Asians are so weird, foreign, and inscrutable --we just can&#8217;t trust them.&#8221;

Unfortunately these sorts of opinions are a classic example of confounding individual traits with group traits. In other words, yes, this one particular immigrant was responsible for this tragedy, but that does not mean that all immigrants or all Asian Americans are ticking psychopathic timebombs just waiting to go on a murderous rampage.

More likely, I think typical reactions will be along the lines of &#8220;Wow, I always thought Asian Americans were so quiet and passive&#8221; or &#8220;As an Asian, he must have been under a tremendous amount of pressure to do well in school.&#8221; Admittedly, these types of responses are a little harder to respond to because there are some kernels of truth to these particular sentiments.

For example, some Asian Americans do tend to be quiet and unassuming, although that is changing and also, much of these perceptions are based on biased media portrayals and cultural stereotypes. Nonetheless, the perception -- whether it&#8217;s true or not -- of Asians being quiet does exist. Similarly, it is also true that many Asian Americans, particular students, do experience a lot of pressure to succeed. In fact, I&#8217;ve written about <a href="http://www.asian-nation.org/headlines/2006/10/asian-americans-and-college-admissions/">such examples</a> before and <a href="http://www.asian-nation.org/headlines/2006/09/asian-american-students-still-deal-with-violence/">other barriers</a> many Asian American students regularly face.

To this mix, we can also add other examples in which various <a href="http://www.asian-nation.org/headlines/2006/05/rash-of-family-violence-among-asians/">social pressures</a> or <a href="http://www.asian-nation.org/headlines/2005/09/hmong-hunter-trial-to-start/">contentious incidents</a> have pushed Asian Americans over the edge, causing them to snap and commit murder. <strong>But does that mean that Asians are more prone to psychotic episodes</strong> that result in them killing those around them?

My answer is, absolutely not. If anything, I believe the opposite is true -- that despite having to frequently deal with various incidents of prejudice, hostility, and <a href="http://www.asian-nation.org/racism.shtml">outright racism</a>, the vast majority of Asian Americans react with dignity, courage, and perseverance. Perhaps too many still keep their emotions buried inside them and need to share their frustrations more openly in order to move beyond them, but as a group, I think that in the face of persistent examples of inequality and injustice, we do not react more violently than any other group.

Did the Virginia Tech gunman&#8217;s reasons include having to deal with racism as an Asian American? At this point, I don&#8217;t know. But if that turns out to be the case, my reaction would be the same as it was in the case of Chai Soua Vang, the Hmong American convicted of killing six White hunters in Wisconsin after a hostile encounter that allegedly contained anti-Asian profanities.

That is, many of us Asian Americans face racism as well, but we don&#8217;t go on murderous shooting rampages. In other words, my point is that ultimately, what Seung-Hui Cho did at Virginia Tech was an example of someone who was clearly <strong>emotionally unstable</strong> and that he just snapped for whatever reasons known only to him.

I would not be a sociologist if I did not also point to the culture of violent masculinity that frames mass shootings like this. My UMass Amherst colleague Sut Jhully has produced several acclaimed documentaries that detail this phenomenon, most notably the video <a href="http://www.mediaed.org/videos/MediaGenderAndDiversity/ToughGuise" target="_blank"><em>Tough Guise</em></a>. For now, I will leave it up to him and others who have greater expertise in this particular sociological context to contribute their analysis.

In the end, this entire episode is an opportunity to remind Asian Americans and anyone else out there who are facing emotional issues or challenging situations that there are resources out there for them to access in order to more constructively deal with those pressures before they get out of hand. Suffering in silence doesn&#8217;t help anyone.

--

Original Source: C.N. Le / CNLe.net
<a href="http://www.cnle.net/2007/04/asian-identity-of-virginia-tech-gunman/">http://www.cnle.net/2007/04/asian-identity-of-virginia-tech-gunman/</a>

C.N. Le

2007-06-06

Brent Jesiek

C.N. Le (le@soc.umass.edu)

eng

Immigrant Status of VA Tech Gunman: Does it Matter?

Thursday, April 19th, 2007

Following up on my <a href="http://www.asian-nation.org/headlines/2007/04/asian-identity-of-virginia-tech-gunman/">last post</a> about Seung Hui Cho, the Virginia Tech gunman, the evidence that&#8217;s coming out seems to suggest that among other things, he felt ridiculed for his social class background (at least in comparison to the &#8216;rich&#8217; kids that he railed against in his suicide note and video) and for being quiet -- but apparently not specifically for being Asian.

In other words, it does not seem that he was lashing out in reaction to incidents of racial prejudice or discrimination. I personally feel somewhat relieved to know that prejudice can now be removed from the equation. Why is that comforting to know? Because to me, it means that Asians and Koreans on the one hand, will not have to engage in the &#8220;<strong>blame game</strong>&#8221; with non-Asians on the other (specifically those who would have been the perpetrators of prejudice against him).

Nonetheless, a different aspect to the media&#8217;s coverage of his situation has gotten my attention and that of many others. Specifically, a lot of analysts, commentators, and observers have brought up the fact that he originally immigrated to the U.S. from Korea. One example of this is to refer to him in the traditional Asian way of using the surname first -- Cho Seung-Hui, instead of the American version-- Seung-Hui Cho.

Does his immigrant status make a difference in trying to understand what he did?

For many Asian Americans, the answer is no. First of all, even though he was originally from South Korea, he immigrated at a relatively early age -- 8. According to sociologists and demographers, that makes him part of the &#8220;1.5 generation&#8221; -- in between the first generation (that would be his parents) and the second generation (those born in the U.S.).

The distinction of being 1.5 generation also includes being raised and socialized primarily as an American. In other words, most of his formative schooling took place in the U.S. and by all accounts, he was perfectly fluent in English. In fact, he was so Americanized that he majored in English, rather than majors normally associated with Asian immigrants such as engineering, math, the &#8216;hard&#8217; sciences, etc.

So why is it that so many people commented and even focused so intently on the fact that he originally immigrated from South Korea?

I think the answer is that they were consciously or unconsciously trying to <strong>culturally distance themselves</strong> from him. In other words, by emphasizing that he was an immigrant, they were basically saying &#8220;He was a foreigner, an outsider -- he wasn&#8217;t one of us, he wasn&#8217;t a &#8216;real&#8217; American. &#8216;Real&#8217; Americans would never have done something like this.&#8221;

That is, even though he was basically socialized as an American, much of America refuses to accept that he was in fact an American. And with underlying sentiments like that, they only function to reinforce notions of Korean Americans and Asian Americans as <strong>perpetual foreigners</strong>. In other words and unfortunately, many Asian Americans still need to overcome the perception that they are not &#8220;real&#8221; Americans.

This particular stereotype exists even though many Asian American families have been in the U.S. several generations, even though we tend to be the most educated racial group in the U.S., even though we are the group most likely to have high-skilled jobs, and even though on the family level, we have the highest income of all racial groups.

Of course, there are specific ethnic differences in this generalization, but the point is that in virtually all other respects of what it means to be an &#8220;American,&#8221; we meet or exceed those standards. But for various reasons, most of which have to do with our skin color and distinct physical appearance to be perfectly blunt, we&#8217;re more likely to be seen as foreigners.

That is exactly what is going on in this instance, with the American media&#8217;s focus on Cho&#8217;s immigrant status. In trying to distance &#8216;real&#8217; Americans from him, American society is only reinforcing the notion that Asian Americans are not &#8216;real&#8217; Americans. In the end, even though we may grieve and cry just like the rest of American society, we still have to pay a price for what he did.

--

Original Source: C.N. Le / CNLe.net
<a href="http://www.cnle.net/2007/04/immigrant-status-of-va-tech-gunman-does-it-matter">http://www.cnle.net/2007/04/immigrant-status-of-va-tech-gunman-does-it-matter</a>

C.N. Le

2007-06-06

Brent Jesiek

C.N. Le (le@soc.umass.edu)

eng

Korean Reaction to VA Tech Shootings: Guilt vs. Solidarity

Sunday, April 22nd, 2007

At the risk of overanalyzing the events surrounding the shootings at Virginia Tech last week, I would like to offer one last set of observations. In my previous posts, I&#39;ve acknowledged that certainly, there are many complicated emotions and reactions to these tragic events. This also applies to Koreans and Korean Americans, for whom this event stirs up additional feelings that include <b>guilt, shame, and embarrassment</b> based on the fact that the gunman was Korean American.

As one article from <a href="http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=2d3b885a913020630dd2537a0eeaf9ed">New American Media</a> describes, many Koreans felt that Cho&#39;s murderous rampage tarnished the image of Koreans and Korean Americans and that it would lead to a backlash against them. Korean government officials have also issued repeated apologies, perhaps fearing that an association with Cho would interfere with their diplomatic and/or economic relations with Americans.

In talking about this particular issue with my Korean American colleagues, many of them observe that for whatever reasons, many Asian Americans in general, but Koreans in particular, are very quick to personalize and internalize the high-profile public failures of anyone identified as Korean or Korean American, and to therefore feel a deep and profound sense of humiliation and guilt about such events. The implication is that somehow, the entire Korean/Korean American community is "responsible" or "at fault" in some way for Cho&#39;s actions.

In contrast, many Koreans/Korean Americans, particularly younger or more "Americanized" members, feel that while they obviously share in the shock, grief, and sorrow regarding the tragic events at Virginia Tech, their community should not have to feel that they are somehow responsible for what Cho did just because he was Korean American, in the same way that Whites as a collective group were not responsible for the shooting massacre at Columbine High School eight years ago, nor any of the other high-profile school shootings in recent American history.

I happen to agree with that sentiment, but I think it&#39;s a more complicated issue than that.

The question that comes to mind for me is, where do we as Asian Americans draw the line between <b>shared guilt versus group solidarity</b>? In other words, in most other respects, many Asian Americans including myself have consistently tried to encourage a sense of pan-Asian American unity and solidarity. This effort is based on the notion that in emphasizing our commonalities and uniting as a collective group, Asian Americans can speak with a louder and more powerful collective voice in American society, rather than as isolated individuals or ethnicities.

But with that in mind, is it then a contradiction to disassociate ourselves from Seung-Hui Cho in this case, and basically say that he wasn&#39;t "one of us" and to reject any insinuation that his ethnicity had anything to do with his actions (which would also imply that some Asian American may share some of his feelings of alienation, etc.)?

Ultimately, I don&#39;t think that it has to be an either-or proposition. That is, we can still say that ultimately Cho&#39;s actions should be understood as the <b>aberrant behavior of an extremely troubled individual</b>, while at the same time saying that his mental illness could have been made worse by <u><b>feeling like an outsider and ridiculed for being different</b></u> -- sentiments that inevitably do exist among many Asian Americans.

Thankfully, even though many Asian Americans may have similar feelings of alienation, they do not react by going on a murderous rampage. Nonetheless, we as Asian Americans should recognize and advocate that (1) we be treated with respect and tolerance -- especially those who might be otherwise seen as outcasts, (2) members of our community who are emotionally troubled be actively encouraged to seek help, and (3) mental health services should be readily available and culturally-competent.

These efforts would go a long way in preventing not just tragic incidents like this, but also in reducing the difficulties many Asian American face in the complicated process of finding our identity within the complicated American racial landscape.

--

Original Source: C.N. Le / CNLe.net
<a href="http://www.cnle.net/2007/04/korean-reaction-to-va-tech-shootings-guilt-vs-solidarity/">http://www.cnle.net/2007/04/korean-reaction-to-va-tech-shootings-guilt-vs-solidarity/</a>

C.N. Le

2007-06-06

Brent Jesiek

C.N. Le (le@soc.umass.edu)

eng

Coding Gun Control

<p>Gene Koo - April 21, 2007 @ 6:42 pm &#183; Filed under <a href="http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/vvvv/tag/code-code/">Code / Code</a></p>
<p>A report in today&#39;s New York Times illustrates both the promise and the difficulties of (legal) code as (software) code (<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/21/us/21guns.html">U.S. Rules Made Killer Ineligible to Purchase Gun</a>). Apparently, slight discrepancies between the wording of Virginia and federal laws that disqualify the "mentally defective" from purchasing a handgun created a gap that enabled Seung-Hui Cho to purchase the weapons he used to carry out his killing spree:</p>
<blockquote>...[T]he form that Virginia courts use to notify state police about a mental health disqualification addresses only the state criteria, which list two potential categories that would warrant notification to the state police: someone who was "involuntarily committed" or ruled mentally "incapacitated."</blockquote>
<p>However, Mr. Cho belonged to a third category: "determination by a court, board, commission or other lawful authority" that as a result of mental illness, the person is a "danger to himself or others." Thus, a special justice&#39;s order that he seek outpatient care and that also declared him an imminent danger to himself was never transmitted to the federal system of handling background checks for handgun purchases.</p>
<p>The article mentions Representative Carolyn McCarthy&#39;s efforts to "automate their criminal history records so computer databases used to conduct background checks on gun buyers are more complete." McCarthy (who happens to represent my hometown) introduced in January <a href="http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?tab=summary&bill=h110-297">H.R. 297</a>. The bill would require state officials to report disqualifications to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) as well as provide funds to fund "establish or upgrade information and identification technologies for firearms eligibility determinations" and "improve the automation and transmittal to federal and state record repositories" disqualifying factors.</p>
<p>Monday&#39;s tragedy offers an extreme example of what happens when jurisdictions fail to reconcile discrepancies in their laws. The answer, however, doesn&#39;t really lie in information technology. Virginia laws didn&#39;t match federal laws, no matter what the technological implementation; no amount of software coding would have changed that. IT can speed up the transfer of information, but an information pipe with no connection on the other side would still be a road to nowhere. Fixing state-federal disconnects will require more than just software code: it will take monkeying around with old-fashioned legal code.</p>
<p>(See also <a href="http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/anderkoo/2007/04/19/the-vanity-of-reason-making-sense-of-the-virginia-tech-tragedy/">my personal response to the Virginia Tech shootings</a>).</p>
<p>--</p>
<p>Original Source: <a href="http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/vvvv/2007/04/21/coding-gun-control/">http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/vvvv/2007/04/21/coding-gun-control/</a></p>
<p>Licensed under <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/">Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5</a>.</p>

Gene Koo

2007-06-06

Sara Hood

Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5

Gene Koo (gkoo@cyber.law.harvard.edu)

eng