“It came out right one our deadline. There hadn’t been a real complete picture that had come forward on the killer. The thought was, ‘This information and these images would provide a lot more context to what happened.’ With that as a basis, we decided to show it, as shocking as some of the information was and the pictures were.”
I was wire editing Wednesday night, and Stertz was definitely right about the story breaking on the morning news cycle. A different breaking story – the shooting of 17-year-old Tedarrian Robinson – pushed the 3 o’clock budget meeting back to 4:30 p.m.; the news that NBC received a package from Cho bursted at about 4:20 p.m. By the time budget adjourned at 5, AP had a 20-inch story. At 6:30, NBC aired some of the package’s footage and photos. By 7, AP’s story was 55 inches.
During my shift, tracking down the photos Cho sent to NBC did not even cross my mind. Perhaps that doesn’t say much about me as a wire editor. Or perhaps it just means that we had a bigger local story that deserved the space. But if I had thought of it, and if there hadn’t been a shooting victim discovered at Reactor Field at MU, would have we run the photos?
It’s a hard question to answer, even in hindsight. The issue at hand, as Poynter Institute media ethicist Kelly McBride described in the Missourian’s article, is “an inherent tension between our journalistic obligation to something that the audience is very interested in and then our obligation to minimize the harm we might cause.” In other words, we would have had to assess the value the photos of Cho added to the story while considering the harmful impact the images could cause.
While I agree that the photos did add another layer to the story, I’m not sure I buy the Daily Press’ justification that they “would provide a lot more context to what happened.” Personally, I’m not the images aided in understanding the context of the killings since they were posed, planned pictures – all we saw was the person Cho wanted the world to see. Actually, the photos could have added to the confusion surrounding the events, as they scream the questions of why and how did this troubled man slip through the cracks?
With this in mind, had the conversation come up in the newsroom that day, I would have been in favor of using the photos – to an extent. The fact that Cho sent this package and its contents to NBC was big, relevant news. The story certainly needed to be out front, and perhaps the pictures, too. What did not need to happen is blow the photos up to dominate the page. Given the shock that struck the nation, the image of Cho pointing two guns at the camera would have had a powerful effect regardless of size. Making such a picture so large, especially when a smaller one would have sufficed, greatly increased the potential for harm. In the Daily Press' case, it actually did.At the Missourian, printing those photos on a day when the city had its own shooting scare certainly would have been harmful to its readers.
All in all, I think the Missourian handled the situation well (even if the on duty wire editor didn't raise the question).
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