Maybe I’m using my anger about this issue to protect myself from grief, but in watching network news coverage of the VTech shooting last night, I was nearly shouting at the TV at Matt Lauer and the rest, who were expending so much airtime on second-guessing and blaming the campus police, and not asking basic, reporter-type questions of the students and staff they were interviewing.
For example, these are the questions I wanted to hear asked:
Who called in the first shooting…the still-alive victims, or a witness, or someone who just discovered the victims?
Were both of those first victims in the same room when they were shot?
Did anyone witness that shooting? And did they tell police the shooter had left? Or did people just find the victims after they heard the shots and not see the shooter leaving?
Did any of the students who were in the classroom and survived recognize the shooter as a fellow classmate? Or as someone they had seen around the building in the past?
Did the shooter say anything before or during the attack?
How many classrooms did he enter and shoot people in? Did he shoot people in the hallways as well?
These are just the beginning of the questions the reporters DIDN’T seem to be asking…questions I thinkare very basic to understanding what transpired. Instead, they kept trying to make it seem as if any of this could have been avoided if only the police had locked the campus down immediately…as if that was even possible.
To make the leap of logic that one of the reporters made…that the police should have known that whoever shot the first two students would be so enraged that of course he would then try to murder a classroom full of people halfway across campus…boggles my mind. As far as the police knew at the time, until they got statements if possible from the dorm victims or witnesses, it could have been a domestic incident between the first two victims.
And I thought the EMT’s being interviewed handled it well when they were asked if they could tell who had done the shooting in the dorm…they basically told the reporter that “we were trying to control the bleeding and stabilize the victim…we leave the investigation to the police.”
What other questions did you want to hear being asked in these initial reports, instead of so much “blame the police for not being psychic”? And I’m sorry if these questions WERE asked on other news programs…I only got to see the coverage on one channel, with Matt Lauer and the rest.
They need to stir the shit to create dialogue where one doesn’t exist. It’s horrific. What more can you really say? I don’t think the school could have prevented it without making it extremely difficult for the students to come and go. But we are a finger-pointing society and the media feel they can take up more $$$-producing air space if they lure people into conversations they’d otherwise not be having.
I was appalled at the behavior of the reporters last night. The had the unmitigated gall to accuse the Chief of Campus Police and the President of seeming, I can’t recall the exact wording, but it was tantamount to saying they didn’t seem to be all that upset.
Seriously? Did they really think they weren’t upset? I can’t even wrap my tiny mind around what it was like for the police and rescue personel on the scene.
Clearly, in the weeks and months that come, there will be investigations and reviews into campus security and a campus-wide notification system for events in which safety is an issue. However, I think the issue at hand it focusing on the police investigation and how the campus is handling the emotional well-being of the students.
I personally don’t care to see the finger pointing right now. I want to know what they’re doing to notify parents, are they helping students get home or helping parents get to the school to comfort their kids? It’s the end of the semester, how are they going to handle grades and graduation? What are they doing, today, to help the kids through this? You have 20,000 students wandering around campus in a state of shock. How extensive of a system of counseling are they setting up?
This is the stuff I want to know.
The whole thing, it’s too horrible for words.
I really wish the media would quit comparing this event to Columbine. As best I can tell, the points of commonality are the words “April”, “shooting”, and “students”.
And stop with the over coverage. Yes, it’s horrible, but do we really need to spend 50% of the radio time talking about it? Even the local music stations have found someone who will talk about it. I believe they found someone who wrote a book about Columbine, who was willing to come on air and make some random comments.
Good call, Kalhoun, this covers my thoughts in a nutshell.
The Virginia Tech massacre was a tragedy, but there seems to be so little to talk about. It’s like one of those “recreational outrage” message board threads, where everyone agrees it was terrible, but there’s nothing really to debate or discuss. The murderer committed suicide and now there’s no one to blame. It seems they’re going after Va Tech’s security… but how do you realistically secure entry to a campus spanning several square miles?
The sheer odds of such a thing occurring really defy any realistic efforts to prevent it.
Michael Vick: “First and foremost, I am shocked and deeply saddened about the tragic loss of life that took place early Monday on the Virginia Tech campus,” said Vick in the statement released by the Falcons.
One talking head said that their reporters went to the shop where the gun was purchased and asked the shop owner how he felt about selling the gun to the crazy dude. Can you stand it?
I must confess, were I the gun shop owner, I would be sorely, sorely tempted to yank everybody’s chains to demonstrate the pointlessness of the question — in other words, giving a satirically serrated reply at odds with the “expected” response, to show what a waste of time and effort it is to run around and get everybody on the record with predictable platitudes — but I suspect it wouldn’t go over very well.
(The first response that leaped to mind: “How do I feel? Well, it depends, I guess. Did he kill any Jews?”)
I think the word was “dispassionate.” I had the same reaction you did. I was especially peeved that it seemed to be directed to the Chief of Police. How the hell did they know whether he was “dispassionate” or not? Were they close friends who knew how he shows emotion?
The questions about what was/wasn’t/should have/shouldn’t have been done were all irritating (especially since they kept asking the same damned questions over and over expecting a different response), but they were fair questions. But how is “you appear dispassionate” a fair question for a reporter (it’s not even a fucking question)? What did they want? Wailing, rending of garments, and gnashing of teeth?
Agreed. I was amazed by it as well and I wouldn’t have been surprised if the chief had stepped out of character and punched that jackass in the face.
Instead, the chief exhibited remarkable composure and simply shook his head in disgust.
I mean, the GALL of it. To accuse someone of such apathy with regard to such a tragedy. OBVIOUSLY, the chief is a professional required to maintain a level of professionalism at all times. Only a fool would mistake his calm demeanor with apathy.
But really, that reporter knew full well the truth that the chief and president were deeply moved by the tragedy. The motivation for the question was, as usual, the desire to over-produce drama and create controversy in a quest to maximize the financial bottom line. And this motivation was and is held over the desire to observe common decency. Therein lay the ultimate repugnance.
Olbermann tonight on his “Worst Person in the World” segment picked three “columnists” who had a “blame the victim” mentality, saying there was something wrong with the students for not fighting back. Olbermann made the point that it was “real life not some James Bond action adventure” fantasy and that saying the students should have fought back, or that immigrants shouldn’t be allowed in this country or that if you’d been there, you’d have rushed the guy was a sign that you were almost as sick as the shooter.
I want them to lead with the victims. You know as well as I that this tragedy is going to be covered ad nauseum for the next 30-some odd days anyway. I say the first three minutes, at least, of every fucking newscast should be a profile of a life ended.
And then we need to be having stories about what we as a society are going to do about the violence that pervades here, and the alienation.
I agree that no one could have anticipated a massacre. But, they keep showing that clip of the security chief saying, “We assumed he had left the campus.” I don’t like the implication that they were not looking for him. Shouldn’t they at least have been worrying about him taking a hostage, or shooting a commuting student and taking their car to get off campus? They didn’t know where he was, and any time you don’t know where a perp is, he’s a potential threat, right?
Perhaps it was a poor choice of words. And I’m not accusing him of being “dispassionate”! But the phrasing reminds me of Shawshank Redemption, the novella, not the movie. “What do you mean, you’re satisfied he’s not on the prison grounds? It means you didn’t find him!” I recognize the difficulty of alerting the whole campus, and the impossibility of closing it, but was finding him not a priority at all?
Other questions: Where was he when he shot himself? Was he face-to-face with cops, or did they find him afterwards?
Are activities cancelled for the rest of the semester? Will exams be pushed back? What about the professors who were killed – will someone take over their classes, or what?
When a hundred million people can hear about and see the same YouTube clip within 24 hours, those who want to hear about the victims will hear about NPR’s coverage and tune in, possibly prompting other outlets to take the same approach.
If they continue not to listen to that sort of coverage in large numbers, then that would say more about what people actually want to tune in to than it says about the news outlets decision to air certain things and not others.
I disagree. Many people follow the lead of the majors. They assume it’s relevant/most important because NBC/CBS/ABC/CNN says it is. Most people are not logging on to YouTube nor listening to NPR. Most people are watching the nightly news, and assuming that if it’s leading it’s important, and if it’s important, it will be the lead. IMO, it’s a fifty-fifty relationship. Big Media gives the people what they want, but they also decide what the people want.
I was going to say that’s debatable, but apparently I’m wrong, according to a brand new Pew Center study about what people know of current events based on where they get their news.
…and interestingly…
People who watch the Daily Show and/or the Colbert Report know as much as people who frequent newspaper websites, which is more than all other sources, and almost 20 points higher than the national average!
