Virginia Tech video scruples

How well did the news media handle the Cho material?

from the April 24, 2007 edition

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The same really can't be said, however, for the way the media handled the material in the time immediately following the NBC release.

That night, and particularly the next day, the news media were flooded with Cho's images and words creating a backlash with some readers and viewers. And though much of the debate centered on the airing of the video and how TV news organizations handled it, the pictures of Cho were arguably just as troubling and abused just as much by other outlets.

On Thursday morning, several newspapers ran huge pictures from the package with Cho brandishing handguns. And on the night of the release, one cable news website ran as its primary image a large picture of Cho pointing a gun directly into the camera – at the reader.

After some protest, a number of news organizations quickly sensed they had stepped over the line and put restrictions on the use of the video. (Even before the public anger, NBC decided to limit the video's usage.)

If the initial airing by NBC News was arguably justifiable, what was wrong with the torrent of coverage that followed? It was used primarily to elicit an emotional response – a response Cho himself wanted to create. The sheer repetition went beyond informing people.

It immortalized him and let him, not the events of the shooting, dominate the news cycle. And it desensitized the audience to an extraordinary and frightening collection of material and ultimately, in some sense, to the event itself.

This won't be the last time news organizations are faced with the issue of what to do with troubling material. The question, as always, is whether media organizations, which often decry feeding frenzies after participating in them, take forward the lessons from this week.

Just rushing something to the audience because it is new or startling isn't enough. There may never be a perfect response, but there should be an explainable one.

• Dante Chinni, a senior associate at the Project for Excellence in Journalism, writes a twice-monthly column on media issues. E-mail him at Dante Chinni.

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