I have not watched broadcast network television news for a very long time, personally. I grew disgusted with them years ago – I can't remember when, exactly I stopped watching. For a while I watched Fox News, but I rarely have time for that these days, either. So I really don't pay a lot of attention to any television news. But it appears they may have finally jumped the shark with the American public. There is a major-push back against the wall-to-wall airing of the video that the monster who went on a rampage at Virginia Tech sent to NBC. And at least one grieving couple who will have to bury their daughter has had enough. They are calling the media out on this.
BLACKSBURG, Va. – Peter Read wants you to make a choice.
He asks that you turn away from the face of the deranged gunman glaring at the camera. Gaze instead at the face of a bright and bubbly brunette who smiled even when she was unhappy, a face always in the middle of a crowd.
It is the face of Mary Karen Read, the daughter he will now see only in scrapbooks.
Hers is just one of 32 promising lives cut short at Virginia Tech — the life of a musician, an aspiring schoolteacher, a doting big sister to five siblings. A 19-year-old freshman who had just filed her first tax return and learned, the day before she died, how to make a pumpkin pie.
When you think of the massacre that befell this quiet college town, those are the memories Peter Read wants you to remember.
The coverage of the media, the endless discussion of tragedies like this, the relentless punditry for hour after hour after hour increases the likelihood that an attention-seeking copycat will emerge to get their 15 minutes of media fame. There are already reports of various acts in other states where someone has mentioned the events at Virginia Tech and have caused near-panic. And the public has made their disgust with the media quite plain to network executives by calling, writing and emailing asking the broadcasters to stop.
Enough, you schmucks. Fox News is the first network to show some decency and will no longer air any footage of the monster or his demented rants. NBC, despite "agonizing for hours" over whether to air and share the vile stuff, has only pledged to limit airing of it. It would have been better if you had decided not to , you fools. Stop giving free publicity to monsters and their monstrous actions. Enough of the mutually beneficial spiral of death. It's time to stop. Now.
UPDATE: The ever reliable Callimachus at Done With Mirrors nails this one. (For the uninformed, Callimachus is employed at a real, live newspaper and has some credentials when addressing media issues.)
My newspaper, somewhat against my advice, ran one of the Cho photos this morning: The one with a gun in each hand, but not pointed at the viewer. Boy, did they hear it from readers. [Not as bad as the time they ran a photo on A1 of a large pregnant woman getting an ultrasound, though.] People hate those photos of Cho. Every time you see one, he wins again. He gets what he wanted. (Emphasis added)
I'm aware most of the backlash is against TV coverage (which is what people mean by "news" and "media" and even — heaven help us — "journalism" anymore) and I'm writing about newspapers. But the
ghoulishness and the cynicism and the sickening, cloying, palpably false grieving of it are transcendant.
Time to stop, schmucks. Now.
