Time for a self-critique

Once again, journalists – and journalism – seem to making the news instead of simply reporting it. Now a week removed from a horrific shooting at the Virginia Tech campus, citizens are complaining about the media coverage of the shooting and media outlets themselves are questioning how they handled one of the biggest news stories in recent years. I think one of the problems lies in the words in that last sentence: ‘the biggest news story.’ I will admit that I was initially glued to coverage of the shooting as were most Americans last Monday. However, as the week passed, I felt as if media outlets treated the unfolding events as simply ‘the biggest news story,’ without stepping back (literally) and showing true compassion and concern for those involved.

When I turned on one of the news networks on Monday night, the first news story I saw was a female journalists talking to students inside the Virginia Tech dorm where Cho killed his first two victims. The group of students this reporter found seemed willing to be interviewed. However, what we did not see were the students who the reporter asked and who refused. One of the students, according to NPR, was outraged at the request to be interviewed inside her dorm room. NPR reported that this female student was approached by another female reporter who asked for an interview. The student asked to be left alone and the reporter answered by handing the student her business card and saying, “Call me.” Again, journalists tried to take advantage of the vulnerable because they had a one-track goal: ‘the biggest story.’

This journalist was not alone in her invasion of the VT campus. When video cameras scrolled a parking lot adjacent to one of the school’s classroom buildings, you couldn’t see the end of a line of television news trucks. A campus, a community that was trying to heal had to do it while being inundated with a seemingly infinite amount of journalists. While it is our role to educate the public and to report on events like these in a thorough fashion, was it really necessary for news outlets to send so many people to Blacksburg? Was it in the best interest of the students who were trying to heal and to come to grips with the day’s events to have to be bombarded by notebooks, recorders, questions and video cameras? Why did morning news shows have to send their anchors to report live on campus? Was that really necessary? While journalism outlets were pushing to be the ones to break new details and to find the most inspirational stories from students, I believe they may have impeded some people’s healing process by not showing enough sensitivity.

After a few days of non-stop coverage on the Virginia Tech shootings, you could still turn on CNN, MSNBC, Fox News and other 24/7 news channels and still see nearly 24-hour continuous coverage of the events. After a while, such inundation of coverage simply disillusions the public. With few new details emerging late in the week, was it really necessary to report the same stories over and over again each hour? Is there a point in which journalists overstep the necessary principles of information gatherers and reporters? I am fearful of what these 24/7 news channels have the power to do to the public. With the media already seen negatively by so many in society, the over saturation of events such as the Virginia Tech shootings may only further push away those who see the media as having its own underlying agenda and motives already.

Another aspect of the media’s coverage that is being questioned relates to NBC’s release of the video tapes and transcripts that they received from Cho in the mail. Going back to journalism’s role as an information provider, I think it was the right decision for the news station to release the video. However, I think that they played the clips of Cho way too frequently. For the public, seeing the images of Cho helped us to begin to understand the psychology of this killer; furthermore, it also helped assuage fears that people had about there being a larger plot beneath these killings. Jack Shafer of Slate also agreed saying: “NBC News needn’t apologize to anybody for originally airing the Cho videos and pictures. The Virginia Tech slaughter is an ugly story, but the five W’s of journalism – who, what, where, when, and why – demand that journalists ask the question ‘why?’ even if they can’t adequately answer it. If you’re interested in knowing why Cho did what he did, you want to see the videos and photos and read from the transcripts. If you’re not interested, you should feel free to avert your eyes.”

But once the tape was released, seeing it plastered as the background on news images and hearing the recordings played incessantly on the news became too much. We knew the information so why did we have to be reminded of it every time we turned on the TV? The images of Cho as well as the emphasis on his South Korean nationality may also have caused an unnecessary amount of scrutiny, blame and ridicule on the South Korean community. I have a friend on campus here who is a foreign exchange student from South Korea who was verbally assaulted last week on the MU campus. She was called names and cornered by a group of students because she shares the same nationality as the Virginia Tech shooter. I can’t help but wonder that if the media had not so emphatically emphasized the fact that Cho was South Korean that maybe the backlash against that community would not have been so strong.

In the midst of a crisis like we saw last week, it can be justifiably hard for media outlets to step back and dissect their coverage of the events. Details are coming out in a hurry, and there is that innate desire – and maybe even necessity because of the nature of the business – to want to provide more exhaustive coverage than your competitor. But even if we can’t self-critique during the events, we have the opportunity as journalists to do so now in order to better prepare for crises to follow. The events showed great strides in journalism as well, with one of the biggest being the level of citizen journalism that arose from that awful day. The citizen journalism that we saw last week marks a change in how journalism will cover crises in the future and how it will be reported. As for the professionals in the business, there is work to be done. Maybe showing compassion should be more important than an exclusive. Maybe we should be take a step back instead of finding a way to get past that police tape. Maybe labeling something “the biggest news story” shouldn’t be the first thing that comes to mind.