The dark side of media

The world was horrified by the events at Virginia Tech last week when a student went on the rampage and shot fellow students and teachers at the campus, killing 32 people. Like many people following the unfolding of events, I am saddened by this tragedy and offer my sympathies to the families of those killed and injured.

Traditional media

When I hear about such horrific things in the news, I turn first to the press and traditional media. I expect to get from that source a reliable and factual reporting of events. We trust the traditional media because we know they cross-check stories and are careful to distinguish speculation from facts and opinion from reportage. Professional journalists arrive at the scene and start finding out what happened, talking to people who were involved, getting stories from witnesses and taking photographs.

New media

With email and social media tools like blogging and Twitter - and the ubiquitous mobile phone, the people involved and others who witnessed the Virginia Tech shootings began spontaneously to tell their own stories, in some cases even as the events were unfolding. The Guardian reported on 17 April that the traditional media was looking to websites for their sources:

News outlets turned to CollegiateTimes.com and PlanetBlacksburg.com, as well as to amateur reporters huddled in college rooms or near the scene who were sending frantic emails to friends and media organisations such as CNN.

CollegiateTimes.com, the website for Virginia Tech’s student newspaper, filed up-to-the-minute online dispatches.

Students were using Facebook and MySpace, social networking sites, to express their responses to what happened, sharing their shock and grief online as they might have done coming face to face in a crisis. ABC News reported these comments from students writing in Facebook:

~ If you are okay! Please update your status in facebook to say something like “I’m okay”

~ We need to get a facebook group started to keep this news story factual and not sensationalized.

~ I too started getting messages from people from different countries wanting more and more info about the incident. Some even went to the extent of asking me to record my reaction over a video cam and send it to them. Disgusting!

Suicide Video

Later, it emerged that the killer, Cho Seung-hui, had compiled a suicide video and digital photo album which he sent to NBC, a US television network. The Guardian reports that following the TV broadcast, the tapes were “rebroadcast instantly around the world on TV and online represents the sinister side of user generated content….The NBC video is the most visited story on the BBC news website and dominates the front page of the Sky News site.”

Plays posted online

Cho was a literature student and wrote plays which centred around murder, paedophilia and revenge killings, according the London Paper, which also reports that two of Cho’s plays “were posted on the internet by Ian MacFarlane, a former classmate of Cho’s.”

Two sides of the media

In this one terrible event, we see the two sides of the media, both traditional and new. The two forms of media can be a source of news and information - and also, a prompt to voyeurism and the unsavoury desire “to know all the gory details”. Social networks can be a place where people can support each other and talk about what happened on the path to healing - or a place for gossip, rumour, hate postings and dark rantings. We can gain fame or infamy by the mere fact of being on TV or online alone. It is hugely disturbing that killers such as Cho can become celebrities overnight for one heinous, savage act and their poor creative efforts pored over like great literature - where they might otherwise trudge on unnoticed and uncelebrated in their lonely lives if they had done nothing at all. For people like that, there is no reward in being good and a huge reward in being evil.

I was in two minds about writing this post. I didn’t want to this post to be yet another space where Cho and what he did is noticed and given airtime - “rewarded” with attention. Yet, it felt important to discuss the role of traditional and new media in this event - in reporting it and also in some ways, being a part of the story by being a means in Cho’s mind to air his grievances and justify himself.

Remember the heroes

So I don’t want to end this post on Cho. I want to end it talking about a hero. Liviu Librescu was one of the professors in the room that day. He was 76 and a survivor of the Holocaust. He blocked the doorway with his body and bought precious moments for his student to make their escape. The Guardian reports “Messages were posted on the web praising the professor. “No act could be more selfless.” one poster wrote.” Let’s remember Professor Librescu and celebrate him. Let’s remember and celebrate the 32 people who died at Virginia Tech.