It was around 5:30 p.m. yesterday when I heard an NPR report that NBC News had obtained a video and pictures from Cho Seung-Hui, the Virginia Tech mass murderer. According to the report, NBC had turned over the material to law-enforcement officials. From what I could glean, it sounded as though the network had decided not to air it. I’ll confess that I didn’t think too deeply about it at that moment, but it seemed like the right decision.
Of course, I was wrong. Later in the evening, after I got home from a meeting, I learned from talk-show-host-in-exile Scott Allen Miller’s blog that NBC had indeed broadcast Cho’s hateful words and images. Miller wrote:
Words have yet to be invented to describe the callousness with which NBC News has re-victimized those who survived or lost loved ones in the massacre and rewarded Cho Seung-hui with post mortem television stardom. Cho’s place in history was assured by his murderous rampage, and now he’s a TV star. Even better, he’s a dead TV star. Ooooooh!
I can’t help but wonder how the families and friends of the dead and wounded reacted when they tuned in to NBC News tonight and saw Cho’s martyrdom video — not a transcript of it being read, but the actual video — in which he cursed those he was about to murder and maim.
At that point, I started flipping around the cable channels. MSNBC, CNN and Fox News all had the Cho videos in heavy rotation as Joe Scarborough, Anderson Cooper and Greta Van Susteren interviewed various experts and officials about what it all meant. This morning, the New York Times, the Washington Post, both Boston dailies and virtually every other media outlet of note have posted the video on their Web sites. So if NBC executives made the wrong call, they’re hardly alone.
But did they in fact make the wrong call? Or is the Cho video so newsworthy that it can’t be suppressed? On reflection, I would argue the latter. As I wrote yesterday, the critics of the Jamal Albarghouti video are right to lament the utter lack of context in which it has been shown, but wrong to argue that, therefore, it shouldn’t be shown.
It’s the same with the Cho video. Running it in an endless loop struck me as offensive, mainly because it was decontextualized, disembodied, displayed purely for shock value. But not to run it at all? How could any news organization withhold such explosive material about the worst mass murderer in history? Miller is absolutely right that the video further traumatized survivors and family members if they were unfortunate enough to see it. But journalists edit the news for the public, not for family members. I also think the original report on the “NBC Nightly News,” still available on MSNBC.com, was handled professionally and sensitively.
Of course, that’s not to say that there aren’t plenty of people who agree with Miller. Check out some of the comments on NBC News anchor Brian Williams’ blog:
Please, please, take the videos of Cho down….
Leading off your national newscast with the ramblings of this disturbed maniac just gave birth to God knows how many more….
You should be ashamed. While the families of those that died are trying to deal with this horrible act of violence you provide the killer with exactly what he wanted, world wide viewing of his hatred….
Oh, my god, your news cast has made me so enraged I cannot even see straight. You are glamorizing this man and his rambling by giving him a national stage for his words? What the hell are you thinking?…
I could go on, but you get the idea. And let me add this, from blogger and frequent Media Nation contributor Peter Porcupine: “By choosing to give this presentation the validation of platform, NBC has sent our nation and our heritage just one more step down a dank and violent road.”
So what, exactly, were NBC News officials thinking? Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz attempts to answer that this morning on his blog, passing along a colleague’s report on what went into the decision. Law-enforcement officials reportedly told NBC at 4:30 p.m. that airing the material would not jeopardize their investigation. NBC went with the story two hours later. Offering some historical perspective, Kurtz writes:
This was no easy decision. Not since the Unabomber demanded that the New York Times and Washington Post publish his endless manifesto has a news organization faced this kind of judgment. In this case, of course, the killer is dead by his own hand, so the only reason to publish his invective is to aid public understanding of the worst gun massacre in American history — or allow him, posthumously, to gloat.
The idea that there may be some sick individuals who’ll see the Cho video and pictures and seek to emulate him is not to be dismissed. It’s that, rather than the families’ sensibilities, that gives me the greatest pause.
Still, I think NBC made the right call. And yes, it’s possible that someday we’ll look back and see that it was a terrible mistake. But there isn’t an editor or a news director in the country who wouldn’t have done what NBC News did yesterday. I realize there are many who will say that’s evidence a twisted media culture. They might be right; I hope they’re wrong.
Update: On “Today,” Matt Lauer had this to say: “We feel strongly that this is not video that we need to run in some kind of an endless loop, and so we will severely limit the amount of footage that you’re going to see” (via NewsBusters). So why was MSNBC doing exactly that the night before?