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Sara Hood
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Tammesia Green
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2007-08-19
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By Tammesia Green
Following the massacre that occurred at Virginia Tech University on April 16, many have come to question their own safety at universities across the country. The profile of a school shooter, once narrowed to a lonely white male high-school student with a fascination with and open access to guns, was quickly re-examined as we discovered the shooter to be 23-year-old Cho Seung-Hui. But before the news had been released that the shooter was Asian, the question on everyone's mind was whether this catastrophe could have been prevented. This question is a good one, and should be debated, but reflecting on the length of time the press devoted to this subject was unsettling for me.
I remember going to class the morning of the shooting and hearing news reports that two people had been shot at a Virginia Tech dormitory. Upon my return five hours later I was shocked to see the death toll had escalated to 33. Immediately, I wanted to know what had happened and if the killer had been caught. Watching the news, all I could find were reporters asking questions like, "Why wasn't the school placed on lockdown? What time was the first e-mail sent to students? Why wasn't more done to prevent this tragedy?"
It became clear that I would not learn anything about what actually took place on the campus that could account for the casualty numbers rising; I had to resort to the Internet to try to make sense of all that was happening. After getting a clear account, I was upset at the amount of time the network news channels devoted to placing blame on officials at Virginia Tech—only, the "placing blame" was not seen for what it was. Instead, it was promoted as good investigative journalism.
I understand that it is the job of a journalist to ask the hard questions and uphold a level of accountability toward officials. However, I found that the questions posed by reporters in press conferences regarding Virginia Tech were not necessarily out of line, but a result of constant criticism of their inability to question authority in high-stakes situations.
Past disasters such as Hurricane Katrina and the logic behind going to war with Iraq played their roles in the types of questions posed to Virginia Tech President Charles Steger. These questions were simply a ploy to preemptively avoid any backlash from the public for not addressing accountability.
Following the invasion of Iraq and never finding weapons of mass destruction, the public began to demand that journalists not be afraid to question authority and command answers from high-ranking officials. Hurricane Katrina allowed for reporters to regain some credibility by analyzing slow relief efforts and the lack of preparation from the government. It is no surprise that in order to keep credibility and uphold the public's faith in reporters, journalists continued to grow a backbone and demanded answers from those in power.
The word "accountability" is ultimately what forced the media to focus on how administrators screwed up and not the shooter. But accountability is not to be placed on school administrators and campus police when the act was really the work of one man, and only he can be blamed. Real investigative journalism would have been to expose the motives of Cho, not debate whether an e-mail should have been sent earlier or been more detailed. Even as students from the Virginia Tech campus were being interviewed and asked if their administration at the university should have done more, the look of "Are you really asking me this now?" ran across most of their faces. They, like me, could not understand why their administrators were being harassed as if they made the events unfold, and not Cho.
There is no way administrators at Virginia Tech could have predicted that a domestic dispute incident would be cause for the closing of an entire university. Anyone who thinks they would have had the notion to suspend classes and not think of the first attack as an isolated incident is thinking in the context of hindsight. Colleges enroll large quantities of students, equivalent to the population of some U.S. cities. Just like a city, Virginia Tech did not shut down when evidence of a homicide was discovered.
It is nice to want to believe that our college campuses are the last step before entering the real world, and are therefore void of the many threats society holds. But evil does exist and it knows no bounds. This evil of one individual is the only factor that should matter in evaluating who is accountable for the Virginia Tech massacre.
--
Original Source:<a href=http://www.newuniversity.org/showArticle.php?id=5789>New University - April 30, 2007</a>
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Zachary Gale <newueic@gmail.com>
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Media Coverage of VT Tragedy Irresponsible
criticism
journalism
media
media coverage
university of california - irvine
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Sara Hood
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Anonymous
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2007-08-14
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By:
Posted: 4/20/07
In the time between the two horrific shootings that took place at Virgina Polytechnic Institute April 16, the killer, Cho Seung-Hui managed to mail disturbing video clips and pictures of himself to NBC News in New York. While NBC News did contact the FBI about the materials, they unveiled the disturbing images to the American people on the nightly news Wednesday. This insensitive move is representative of the mainstream media's disappointing coverage of the tragedy, and The Miami Student editorial board finds the glorification of this mass murderer appalling and offensive.
NBC News is effectively giving Cho Seung-Hui exactly what he wanted - a pulpit from which he can speak his insanities. Cho's chilling and senseless photographs only adds to the pain of the victims' friends and families and are not worth playing over and over again. In another sign of sensationalist coverage, other networks, such as CNN, aired a running gunshot tally based off of a cell phone audio clip captured by a Virginia Tech student, almost oblivious to the fact that with each shot another innocent person was being murdered.
This theatrical media coverage suggests that the lessons from Columbine have not been taken to heart. In the aftermath of the 1999 Columbine shooting, the media covered the event with a similar circus-like attitude. Contemporary 24-hour coverage has led to poor journalism that thrives on ratings, melodrama and editorialized field reports, all of which takes away from the actual event.
Rather than these sad examples of media irresponsibility, The Miami Student editorial board feels the American public deserve staid reporting. Moreover, rather than glorifying Seung-Hui's acts, the press should focus more on the victims of his acts. For example, Liviu Librescu, a 76-year-old engineering professor and Holocaust survivor, saved his students by blocking his classroom's door with his body, sacrificing his life in the process. Stories such as this represent a sign of selfless humanity amidst the horror of the random violence.
In the end, the media coverage of the tragedy has been disrespectful toward the families and friends of the innocent victims. Just hours after their deaths, the media swarmed the college town of Blacksburg, Va. with little regard for the students and families who lived through the violent act. In many ways, the networks' theatrical coverage has helped to desensitize the American people to the horrors of the April 16 attack. The media should simply allow the tragedy to speak for itself - its horror is self-evident.
--
Original Source:<a href=http://media.www.miamistudent.net/media/storage/paper776/news/2007/04/20/Editorials/Medias.Response.To.Vt.Tragedy.Warrants.Criticism-2870736.shtml>The Miami Student - April 10, 2007</a>
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eng
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The Miami Student
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"Skotzko, Stacey Nicole" <skotzksn@muohio.edu>
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Media's response to VT tragedy warrants criticism
boston university
criticism
media coverage
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Sara Hood
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Matthew Bunch
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2007-08-09
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By: Matthew Bunch
Issue date: 4/20/07
We've all been rocked and saddened this week by the tragedy in Blacksburg. Despite our fierce rivalry with the Hokies, we all are college students and share a common bond. One thing I noticed over these past few days has been the media coverage, blanketing the campus and interviewing everyone possible. I began to wonder, what kind of coverage would be done if something like that happened here?
The Rock would be swarmed with media, so students would of course have to move any vigil they would like to hold to some other venue. The BankUnited Center would be rented out, so I'm sure students couldn't go there either.
The blame would go immediately to the football team. Sports pundits like Bill Plaschke and Mark May would call for the athletic department to be carpet-bombed, and the immediate arrest of every athlete on campus. Surely, if it happened at UM and it was bad, it's the athletic department's fault.
Next would be the criticism of university president Donna Shalala, citing her time with the Clinton administration. Surely, without his passing of the Brady Bill, students could have been armed with Uzis and handled the gunman themselves.
Ultimately, the public at large will decide that this kind of thing is just what happens in Miami; it's "Thug U," so why should we be surprised?
How can I make these assumptions? Because the same kind of reaction is unleashed whenever this university is faced with tragedy. Bryan Pata's murder was used by the media to attack the University of Miami. Just look at MSNBC's Mike Celizic, who said this after Pata's murder:
"And so, it really doesn't matter why Pata was shot or by whom. He played for the Hurricanes. He died violently. If it happened at Ohio State, we'd be shocked. But at Miami, a lot of people will say it's not even a surprise: when you recruit thugs, such things happen."
Of course, it was the university's fault. By recruiting guys other teams had given up on, someone came and shot Pata.
Look at the Willie Cooper/Brandon Meriweather shooting last summer. Cooper and Meriweather, noticing a suspicious vehicle circling their house, investigated. They were shot at. Meriweather returned fire in defense, with a registered gun. What was the response from the media? "Let's get Miami."
Instead of worrying about the status of Cooper, it became a pile-on. Remove Cooper and Meriweather from the team, put Miami on probation, and what else can we do to them?
So what is the point? Is the coverage that important? Don't most people tune out the media anyway? As I've been watching the coverage, I have felt such compassion for Virginia Tech. That university needs everyone now, as they grieve and try to move on. As I came to the realization about what would happen at Miami, I grew scared. Would anyone be there in our time of need? As time went by, I came to a realization: they probably wouldn't.
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eng
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The Miami Hurricane
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Greg Linch <greglinch@gmail.com>
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Would the media be there for us?
media coverage
potential response
university of miami
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Sara Hood
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Bethany Quinn
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2007-08-09
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I'm from Virginia, and I know students at Va. Tech. I've been watching the irksome news coverage.
Death is always sad, but the silver lining is that it brings people together. Solidarity is why people are so compelled to tune in, and while Facebook has been great for that, the media sucked. Facebook may be prone to rumors, but you can tell who's missing and who to be concerned about.
The media, however, have been eking out widespread political implications of this tragedy, instead of bringing people together.
This event does have political ramifications, but the media has missed the mark by saying things like, in a nutshell, "He was born in a different country! Let's make this about immigration, despite the fact that most of his formative experiences were here in the US because he had lived here legally since he was eight!"
Or there's "How on earth could this psycho get a gun? Well, it was a completely mundane, legal purchase, and he bought it with 'chilling simplicity.' Let's interview the merchant and harp on gun control!"
Even on a 24-hour network, there are no gray areas in politics, so their coverage is ill-suited even for the wider audience. Gun control and free speech may be slippery slopes, but when free speech demonstrates a violent psychosis, how about a little gun control?
I hate to be blunt, but we all know the Cho type, and as individuals, we should reach out like the teacher did. As a campus policy, I'm not suggesting that loners should be branded on the forehead, but when a kid confuses fantasy and reality, expresses violent fantasies and suicidal thoughts, and finally gets sent to the counseling center while you've got him in the straightjacket, confiscate his registered guns.
Bethany Quinn
Senior and former Hurricane columnist
--
Original Source:<a href=http://media.www.thehurricaneonline.com/media/storage/paper479/news/2007/04/20/Opinion/Letters.To.The.Editor-2871116.shtml>The Miami Hurricane - April 20, 2007</a>
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The Miami Hurricane
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Greg Linch <greglinch@gmail.com>
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Media focus is off target
criticism
media coverage
media response
university of miami
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Brent Jesiek
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Otto Wahl
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2007-07-17
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posted 5.01.07
<a href="http://www.miwatch.org/about.htm#Wahl">Otto Wahl, Ph.D.</a>, University of Hartford
The tragic death of 33 students at Virginia Tech has shocked and saddened us all. Given the mental health aspects of the situation, it is not surprising that there has been much in the coverage about mental illnesses and their treatment. Unfortunately, the articles and editorials that followed the shootings have often been troubling in what they convey to the public about mental illnesses and mental health interventions.
One troubling aspect of the media coverage has been the frequent vilification and dehumanization of the troubled young man who perpetrated the killings. Appropriately sympathetic descriptions of the background and lives of the "32" victims were widespread, and such descriptions helped us to better appreciate the tragedy on a more personal level. However, descriptions of the 33rd person who died in the tragedy, Cho Seung-Hui, focused almost exclusively on his pathology, his anger, and his menacing manner. Some media sources characterized Cho as motivated by "meanness;" others labeled him as a "fiend," a "psychopath," or "just plain "evil." Such coverage ignored the fact that Cho's death—and much of his life—was also a tragedy. His alienation, isolation, anger, and ultimate suicide are probably not the life goals he set out for himself. Much of the media coverage did discuss Cho's mental health, but mostly without notable empathy for his difficulties.
Related is the mistaken implication in coverage of Cho's actions that mental illness and violence are synonymous. The widespread images of Cho brandishing weapons epitomized the already prevalent public image of the "menacing madman," and that image was underscored further by the fear-inducing labels Cho was given in many media accounts, such as "maniac" and "psycho" and worse. Likewise, the repeated discussions of the need to protect the college community—and the larger community—from such individuals served to reinforce unwarranted public fears of people with mental illnesses. The vast majority of people with mental illnesses, including severe mental illnesses, are neither violent nor criminal. The vast majority of students on campus who are living with mental illnesses are not threatening others, but working and studying to make better lives for themselves. I saw little discussion of this in media coverage.
The events at Virginia Tech were truly horrendous. The media, like the public, searched to make sense of the tragedy and to find clues as to how future tragedies could be prevented. However, there was a tendency to focus on mental illness as the sole or primary explanation for the horrific outcome at Virginia Tech. Many reporters and even mental health professionals seemed to commit what social scientists have dubbed the "fundamental attribution error." This term refers to our tendency to attribute the actions of others, particularly unacceptable actions, to their inner, psychological attributes and to neglect potential situational influences. If we succumb to this error and focus mainly on the possible internal causes of behavior, the mental health of Cho Seung-Hui in this case, we may overlook other potential contributors to the event and, thus, other potential and important avenues for prevention.
Often overlooked, then, were questions about how we engage or do not engage students on our college campuses or how we do or do not integrate diverse students to better create a sense of community, questions about what gaps in understanding and education about cultural differences might have contributed to Cho's apparent isolation and to the ultimate outcome, and questions about the extent to which stigma and negative attitudes about mental health problems could have contributed to Cho's apparent reluctance to accept counseling assistance despite the recommendations of Virginia Tech faculty.
Instead of looking at the factors above, many media reports implied—directly or indirectly—that the major preventive solution is the lessening of restrictions on involuntary hospitalization. After horrific events like the Virginia Tech deaths, it is easy to forget that the current criteria for involuntary psychiatric commitment result from a long history of indiscriminate and abusive use of forced hospitalization and from a belated recognition that the individual civil rights of people with mental illnesses need protection. Just as the tragic events of 9/11 should not have allowed us to dismantle the basic civil liberties on which our country is founded, a tragic event like Virginia Tech should not serve as justification for diminishing the hard won civil protections of the millions of people with mental illnesses. But it may, and some of the news coverage is suggesting that it should.
Also, it is not clear that involuntary commitment for Cho would have been the appropriate solution. Coerced treatment may have poorer long term outcomes than voluntary treatment if it creates trauma and fuels antagonism and poorer treatment compliance. For a person like Cho, who already felt persecuted and angry, this may have been likely. So hospitalization might have only postponed the tragic outcome. Outpatient treatment may have had a better chance of succeeding in helping Cho and preventing the lethal outcome. In hindsight, we know it was not successful, but we do not know that involuntary hospitalization would have had more success.
The events at Virginia Tech have led to calls for greater security on campuses and for a better ability of campus authorities to exclude people with serious mental illnesses from the campus. Again, this represents a troubling inclination to further restrict the rights and opportunities of people living with mental illnesses. Easier hospitalization and campus restrictions are not what is needed for preventing tragedies such as the one at Virginia Tech. Instead, we need better training of service providers to deal with individuals who are reluctant to accept treatment, and therapeutic alternatives that are more attractive, less aversive, and better funded. We also need reduced stigma for seeking and accepting treatment, along with greater outreach and prevention efforts.
I do not mean to suggest that there was no sensitive and appropriate media coverage of the events. Many stories were sympathetic to the needs of troubled youth on campuses, urging improvements and cautioning against attempts to exclude students. Former Rosalynn Carter Journalism Fellow, John Head, for example, wrote, in the <i><a href="http://www.ajc.com/search/content/opinion/stories/2007/04/20/edhead0420.html">Atlanta Journal Constitution</a></i>, "A policy that punishes students for enduring emotional and mental disturbances will only discourage them from seeking help." Articles and editorials have called for expanded suicide prevention programs and improvements in culturally competent services, as well. An article in the <i><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/22/AR2007042201190.html">Washington Post</a></i>, by another former Carter Fellow, Shankar Vedantam looked "beyond the shooter," to consider social factors that may have contributed to the fatal outcome. And there did emerge a number a number of pieces that looked more fully and sympathetically at the life of Cho Seung-Hui and at his family's pain and suffering.
Media coverage also brought to light the archaic and offensive language of the federal statutes for regulation of gun purchases. I am referring to the prohibition against selling guns to "mental defectives,' a category which, for the federal government, apparently includes persons with mental illnesses. I am amazed that such a reference to mental illness—language that was discarded decades ago because of its pejorative nature and its connection to eugenics and Nazi cleansing—could still be the chosen terminology in the laws of our country.I can only hope that the wide exposure of this language in the press may lead to sufficient embarrassment and/or outrage as to generate an appropriate updating.
I am, however, cautiously optimistic. Despite the great deal of stigmatizing coverage that has surrounded the tragic loss of life at Virginia Tech, the discussions that are occurring have the potential to generate important changes. Chief among these are greater understanding of and improved responsiveness to mental health needs on campuses. I do not mean to suggest, as some media coverage has, that these are needed primarily to protect the student body from unstable shooters, but rather that they are needed so that universities can enhance their abilities to support the learning and accomplishment of all students, including the many who experience mental health problems.
--
Archived with permission of the author.
Original Source: MIWatch.org
<a href="http://www.miwatch.org/Wahl.htm">http://www.miwatch.org/Wahl.htm</a>
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Otto Wahl (owahl@hartford.edu)
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Thoughts About Media Coverage of the Virginia Tech Tragedy
media coverage
mental health
mental illness
violence
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Sara Hood
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Sarah Ball
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2007-06-24
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By: Sarah Ball
By now, there isn't a soul in the United States who hasn't seen the greasy, glinting forehead of Cho Seung-Hui, the gunman responsible for what broadcast news and the blogosphere are terming "the Virginia Tech Massacre." His grease and his glint are everywhere, above every fold, at the top of every segment of every news program on every channel. Every anchor and every rural Virginia stringer for every paper have started every story this week with that grease, and that man.
Then, invariably, they turn it over to us-to the cell phone cameramen, the bloggers, the Facebook status changers.
The era of the citizen journalist, age 19, has arrived.
This week, in this new era, I watched major news programs become veritable footage Crazy Quilts, with those same borrowed phone shots and MySpace stills casually inter-cut with traditional anchor shots. In establishing a timeline on that fateful Monday, journalists did not simply seek help from the intrepid reporters at Tech's paper, The Collegiate Times. They posted interview requests to message boards, requested footage to be e-mailed or uploaded to websites, scoured community sites like Facebook and MySpace for leads.
Fox News, which has outdone itself with glossy infotainment segments and dirge-like piano soundtracks, ran an entirely viewer-constructed package called "You Report" on the day of the shooting. You Report was comprised of cell videos of police cars and evacuating students, as well as transcribed posts from sites like Fark.com and MySpace.
When not plumbing the citizen journalist pool for pre-made reporting, Fox itself reported on other ways students were using Internet tech-kids notifying their families of their safety via Facebook, for example, when cell phone lines were clogged.
In the absence of order, the cyber chaos both reported the news and was the news.
All this is perhaps unremarkable, given the prevalence of digital communication in collegiate life, and the ways in which crisis tends to unify a body of people in whatever community, digital or physical, they may lie. Yet the transition from man-on-the-street interviewing and reporting in times of crisis to this mish-mashing of homemade footage nuggets can't pass without examination.
It's not only a pretty new phenomenon for major network news stations to capitalize on these particular grassroots sources (Facebook? Really?), but it also actually alters the genre of what we're seeing. Ostensibly, we're watching news. But since when did news have weepy soundtracks, or gunman-style storyboard art, or dozens of non-journalist reporters? Is not a Fark post or personal blog entry the kissing cousin of a televised diary-room confession, that familiar feature of reality television that red flags what we're watching as staged and fictional?
Even secondary or tertiary differences, like the nauseating bobbing of handheld-cell phone footage, shows viewers a pure and unfiltered strain of raw emotion-a guttural-ness that we perhaps more closely associated with documentary film than with the six o'clock news.
Hearing the personal thoughts of students is tremendously moving to me, and has no doubt left my fellow denizens of the beautiful Old Dominion close to breakdown as we wait to hear about friends and family. Yet each time I hear or read those unadulterated thoughts, or see that dizzying cell shot, I am not left with the impression that what I am consuming is news. I am still not sure what I can safely believe.
Documentarian takes on soft news, in both conception and delivery phases, may peter out as a trend. We may lose our taste for the sensationalized, the citizen journalist and the unapologetic commodification of fact. At the bottom of a pack of Sour Patch Kids, your tongue eventually goes numb.
But we could also adapt. We could learn to better process what hard news means for average citizens, as we see more confessionals, read more superlative language, hear more weepy piano. Emotive, homemade news could be the final frontier in mobilizing apathetic Americans.
Or. Jack Shafer, editor-at-large of Slate.com, wrote Tuesday in defense of journalists that there is "no tougher assignment in journalism than knocking on the door of a mother who has lost her young daughter to a killer and asking, 'How do you feel?'" Earnestness and an unshakeable "self-disgust" help reporters to cope and to get the mother on the record in these situations, he continues. Besides, if networks hadn't gone to the wall on this one, chasing Facebook for sob stories, viewers would have been outraged.
I'm not sure that I agree. Shafer says we're narrowly avoiding outrageous sensationalism overall, but I'm not sure that it wouldn't take much more than a boost in market competition among media outlets to finally reduce feature journalism to pulp. And if that happens-if rules bend to accommodate the effectively affecting, and if the untrained citizen reporter takes over-what mourning family would dignify that imposing knock with an open door and a somber quote?
I know that I would not.
<i>Sarah Ball is a Trinity junior and former editorial page editor of The Chronicle. She is a native of Virginia. Her column runs every Thursday.</i>
--
Original Source: <a href=http://media.www.dukechronicle.com/media/storage/paper884/news/2007/04/19/Columns/Documentary.News-2853094.shtml> Duke Chronicle - April 19, 2007</a>
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eng
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Duke Chronicle
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David Graham <david.graham@duke.edu>
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Documentary news?
duke
media coverage
new media
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Sara Hood
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Valerie Syverson
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2007-06-14
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By Valerie Syverson, Co-Editor
Thursday, April 19, 2007
As anyone used to following national news knows, there's nothing quite so tailor-made for TV news as a school massacre like last Monday's. All other news is immediately superseded for footage of the scene of the tragedy, speeches from every dignitary that can show up, and, when there's no new footage, endless rounds of analysis from every pundit who isn't already booked somewhere else.
Naturally, opportunities abound for sensationalistic coverage, and to use words like "tragic", "senseless", "horrific" -- all of which, though of course applicable, have been diluted through decades of overuse and sadly no longer register as earnest sentiment. And, of course, there's the framing and the political football, and then the criticism of opponents for using a mass homicide as a football.
Sound familiar? It should -- to anyone else who wasn't living under a rock during the 2001 Littleton shootings.
So the editors of the Tech will, for this writing, refrain from adding one more to the long roster of responses expressing the obviously appropriate sentiments -- sympathy, concern, and grief. If you don't know the sort of thing I mean, you can read Dr. Chameau's article three columns to the right; his statement alone renders it superfluous to say anything of the sort in this space.
Instead, the concern that motivates me is over the way the news media has covered the event and its repercussions. Although the majority of responses have, of course, been those of decent human beings, there is a certain subset of the responses that are rather horrifying. The first that comes to mind is the slew of columnists who have ghoulishly seized upon the opportunity to lambaste their favourite targets, be that violent video games for giving people ideas, atheists for not praying at memorial ceremonies, or foreign nationals for (apparently) existing at all. But, of course, these random hearse-chasing political creeps are just columnists, not Real News.
More problematic are those news outlets which have seized on what, no doubt, they thought was a new and refreshing angle on the story by focusing on the first of his victims. Here we find headlines like "Gunman's Love Spat Sparked Massacre". However, the problem here is that the woman in question was never romantically involved with the murderer -- he just stalked her. That's right, the reporters mistook a stalking victim for a disdainful lover. Of course, there's a bit of overlap between the two as presented in many cultural narratives, but it should be possible to disentangle them in real life. when we can get different people's stories.
The most political spinning, though, has come in the area of gun control. (I assume this is because there's no way to restrict college students' access to violent music and games, so that usually-fruitful bit of blather is verboten.) And in fact, it has become apparent that the gunman got his guns quite legally and aboveboard. The bafflement at this from foreign news outlets is an amusing commentary on how bizarre the U.S. gun culture is from any outside point of view. But the gun rights advocates jumped on the story too; there are those who claim the tragedy would have been averted if more students were packing heat. The debate, of course, rages.
At least we can know that the world is the same old looney bin as always, because the Westboro Baptist Church is going to be picketing the funerals. Why? Unclear; their official releases say something about "the emissary of God's wrath". I assume it's just another chance for them to be on television. But I suppose the news media can rest assured that however inconsiderate, tasteless, and ghoulish they might be, they'll never outdo Fred Phelps.
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Original Source: <a href="http://tech.caltech.edu/TECH/04_19_2007/article13.html"> The California Daily - April 19, 2007</a>
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Marissa Cevallos <tech@caltech.edu>
editor-in-chief, The California Daily
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News ghouls hit all the wrong notes
caltech
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Anna Brawley
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Anna Brawley
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2007-05-23
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[This is a copy of my initial reaction to the media coverage of the VTech shooting, posted on my Wordpress blog. Unfortunately both links are now defunct - I wish I had saved a page of the "godblessvtech" blog, because it was to me a poignant illustration of the possibilities of the Internet for creating and reaffirming community. At the same time, however, I was disgusted by CNN's use of digital media - particularly video - to create what I saw as a voyeuristic experience of the event.]
"On the Ethics of Bad News"
Posted April 16, 2007
<a href="http://zozer319.wordpress.com/">http://zozer319.wordpress.com/</a>
I didn't really hear about this until late tonight, partly because all the people working out around me at the gym with TVs had them on stupid MTV the whole time.
Anyway, I just wanted to share with you all two remarkable (for very different reasons) things I found online when doing a search for some overview of the shooting. I send them in particular because they are both temporary postings but say an awful lot:
First, a striking example of a good use of the Internet, not only to share information but as a sense of non-physical community. I found this blog (probably just set up today, for this purpose only, so not actually a blog per se) on Wordpress - it's just a list of names and people asking for information on whether the individuals listed are okay.
<a href="http://godblessvtech.wordpress.com/2007/04/16/hello-world/">http://godblessvtech.wordpress.com/2007/04/16/hello-world/</a>
Scroll down to read the progression of the information gathering and messages left. Also note the amount of information gleaned from Facebook.
Second, a striking example of outright voyeurism disguised as comprehensive journalistic coverage. In browsing CNN's coverage of the story, I was disgusted by the amount of video - not of interviews and re-runs of news stories, but the amount of direct footage of the shootings/events themselves;
<a href="http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/16/vtech.shooting/index.html">http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/16/vtech.shooting/index.html</a>
There is no clear line between information and too much information, but that might be close. Thank goodness I wasn't watching CNN today, or I probably would have got pissed off at them a lot sooner than now (not that it's just them... but if they bill themselves as the world's #1 news source I hope it's not too much to ask to hold them to some minimum standard).
Anyway, that's all I've got. And get ready to hear about this one for weeks (not from me - from "The Media.")
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Original Source: <a href="http://zozer319.wordpress.com/2007/04/">http://zozer319.wordpress.com/2007/04/</a>
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On the Ethics of Bad News
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