One of the controversies surrounding the Virginia Tech shootings was the package that Cho sent to NBC. It included video of him ranting and posing; NBC aired it and then other news outlets re-aired it, branded with NBC’s ID. A negative reaction quickly followed and the media scaled back on its use. A debate ensued over whether NBC made the right choice.
A new Pew poll shows that respondents approved of NBC’s decision:
According to the Pew Research Center’s News Interest Index, 49% of those polled said they approved of NBC airing the contents of the Virginia Tech shooter’s package on air. 41% disapproved, and 10% had no opinion.
But, they also felt enough was enough:
The press in general got high marks for their coverage of the massacre with 23 % of respondents saying the media did an excellent job. 43% said the media did a good job, and 50% said the story was overcovered.
Kevin Drum felt it was okay for NBC to use the video, depending on how they used it:
We have more options today than we did ten years ago, and I’m pretty open to the idea that NBC should have merely explained the tapes, maybe showed the images briefly, and then told their viewers that the full package was on their website for anyone who wanted to see the whole thing. No exploitation, but full disclosure.
Drum felt the video had legitimate news value, showing how disturbed Cho was, and was skeptical that it would inspire copycats. More importantly, he thought news organizations “shouldn’t be in the business of withholding information about important stories just because they think certain people might be disturbed by it.”
Mickey Kaus thought that NBC was a little hypocritical about what it would and wouldn’t show for fear of influencing people, but also agreed on Drum’s point:
I’m sure there are things we all have learned from Cho’s promo-pack (the most important of which is that he compiled it and sent it off). What I doubt is that these are things we couldn’t learn 98% as well by hearing, say, Pete Williams tell us what’s in the videos and photos, rather than seeing the videos themselves.
The key point here is the difference between push media and pull media.
The model for newspapers is changing (see earlier post), but the traditional print model was based on the fact that you could only physically print so much news each day. Then, editors organized the news according to importance, placing some items on the front page, above the fold, below the fold. But in the digital world, a newspaper (or any other news organization) can publish as much news as they can produce. And that news can be sorted, placing some items on the home page and burying others deeper, but if a reader uses an RSS feed or Google News, than it doesn’t matter.
TV news is different from a newspaper. If you’re reading a newspaper, you still select which stories you read. You can skim through an article or not even look at an entire section. But with television, you usually have the choice of watching or not watching. If you’ve seen any cable news at all, you know that if they’re running footage of Anna Nicole Smith — and such footage distresses you — your only recourse are to not watch at all.
But a media outlet can alert readers/viewers that such footage exists and allow them to view such information at their choice. Rather than pushing information at you indiscriminately, allow you to pull in what you want. It’s a win-win.
Tags: Seung-Hui Cho, Kevin Drum, NBC