Psst - please change Kbertocci's site to cite - she SCC'd it right away.

I think a grownup society needs to look at the truth of evil, even if it is unpleasant.

As I said earlier, I would rather have a media that presents too much than too little.

As for "erring on the side of caution." This makes since except, in almost every situation, caution on one area causes risk in another. And even if the risk in one area is much more salient, that doesn't necessarily mean it always has the greatest long term importance.

scc: sense. Sorry. Feeling a bit shell shocked.

I think I'm gonna take a break. I have enough on my plate.

Totally with Martooni. I heard on NPR this morning that there was significant debate within CBS whether to air this material or not, and it was decided it would add to people's knowledge, so they did.

These ramblings and pictures confirmed many people's understanding that Cho was deranged, but it also adds to his *legend* as it were, for people tempted to do the same thing. There's a reason he named the Columbine killers.

Gavin de Becker, in his excellent book, _The Gift of Fear_ has a section on the MSM and how killers benefit from it. It would have been far better if the MSM were referring to Cho as a *loser* than a *loner*.

Will fix cite. I actually DID fix it once and the Moveable Type went kablooey.

I got the impression from reading the plays and seeing small excerpts of the videos that Cho was maybe a victim of sexual abuse and very angry about it. The references to "your Mercedes" and liquor could almost be taken to be a rebuke to his abuser - perhaps I missed the parts where he specifically mentioned that he was referring to rich students.

I certainly don't appreciate the huge shots of Cho aiming a weapon at me (the camera); makes me think again of the horror those kids and professors went through.

But I must take issue with an expression often used in cases like this, and which in fact President Bush used himself during the event in Blacksburg at which he spoke (and I find it typical that he would use such an expression without stopping to think about it first):

"They were in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Excuse me? They were in the wrong place? I hope my soon-to-be college student doesn't think being in class is the wrong place.

They were in the right place.

The shooter was in the wrong place.

End of rant. Thank you very much.

dbG, good point, but I think the videos make him look like a loser, not a legendary figure. I think they diminish him. This is a tough thing to say with any precision. But I think when he was a faceless killer he was scarier than he is now. Demystification is good. Seems to me, anyway.

I saw some of this footage in a waiting room this morning, so my only choice was to watch it or wait in the hall.

I'm disgusted. Stop playing it before some other idiot decides to up the ante with a better made home video and bigger body count. I'm tired of hearing about his mental illness. He was an idiot who should have shot himself first.

All this "You made me do it" crap. Bull****.

The events that started unfolding Monday are newsworthy. A free press reports the news. The business end of news organisations, in our capatalistic system, need to show a profit. Ancillary material, like the stuff sent by Mr. Cho, are beyond belief and, due to changes in societal values, are also the newsworthy material that that tend to attract viewers such that the organisation in question remains profitable. I feel like such pictures and digitized imagery is used more often to satisfy a societal fascination with the ultraviolent. The people that use it to gain better insight into the reasons behind such heinous acts are most likely in the minority. There was an incident yesterday at a Charlotte HS in which a student brandished a gun at his classmates, then drove up the road and checked himself out after refusing to give up his weapon. One could marginally argue the copycat angle for this scenario. We find ourselves caught between the proverbial rock and the hard place. I'll choose RD's strategy: one chooses to view or not to view. The tough role is that of the adult that needs to explain the whys of this turn of events to inquiring children.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I was dumbfounded at the rants about rich kids. Since when did students at a public university become rich?

We've already had a copycat in this area. A 16-year-old shot and killed himself yesterday near a high school in the northern part of the county. The high school and middle and elementary schools nearby locked down and were okay.

I edit what I consume, news-wise, by reading instead of watching television. I think Joel's right; Cho is much less scary and diminished by the video. When nothing is left to the imagination, the reaction is disgust. That he send the materials shows how deranged he was.

I think Joel put it very well with "doing Cho the favor of imposing order on his mental chaos." As RD said yesterday, we desperately want to create some sort of rationality in which Cho's actions are understandable and thus avoidable. It isn't going to happen, folks.

I understand the initial decision to air the tapes. I object strongly to the repeated airings. At the risk of indulging myself in speculation, which you know I dislike, I'll suggest that Cho wanted the pictures and video aired. Otherwise, he would have sent them somewhere else, or not sent them at all. That has worked very well for him, posthumously of course, and I don't like it. Why follow along with what he wanted, giving him yet more exposure for incoherent and pointless rambling? I don't think repeated public airing add anything to the discussion. As Ivansdad told the Boy this morning, if he is on TV enough at least some people may think of him as a hero, or at least a misunderstood role model. We don't want that.

And if you doubt it could happen, look at Tim McVeigh. Today is the twelfth anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, not much noted elsewhere perhaps but remembered here. Against all odds, McVeigh is still admired in some quarters as a patriot.

Well, I'll just try and restate my point:

What, exactly, did we "learn" from the photos and video? Perhaps I could defend showing that stuff if it had been the first evidence available of his "state of mind." We'd already been inundated with such info, however, including medical assessments. Apart from being "new" footage of the shooter, that material had zero news value. Ergo, there was no justification for airing it.

I agree with Scottynuke. I understand the initial decision to air the tapes. I don't agree with it.

Usually I am in favor of more information rather than less. I think I'm making a distinction here because the tapes etc. don't seem to me to qualify as "information" which can explain or inform a public discussion. Obviously everything to do with the event is "information" for law enforcement, but that is a different question.

Sky report (my first): Completely overcast to all horizons. From off-off-white to light gray with bits of darker gray here and there. Ironically, I have an ELO's "Mr. Blue Sky" tune-cootie buzzing around in my head.

Weather report: Supposed to hit the low 70s this weekend. Saturday should be mostly sunny (I say with fingers crossed).

Time for lunch: baked ziti, meatballs and garlic bread. My mouth is already starting to salivate...mhmhmhmmmmm

repost from last night:

going back to what bill everything said, why was it necessary to show the video footage send in by cho? didn't they pause to think about the fact that they're doing exactly what he wanted them to do? don't they have a problem with validating that and possibly inspiring other unstable individuals to copycat? i think nbc's decision showed poor taste, poor judgment and lack of respect for the victims' families.
------------

demystifying could have waited a week or two if it needed to happen at all. or transcripts of the video could have been provided instead.

what irks me the most is that the message of nbc's decision is basically - if you do something horrific enough and send us your video, we will show it.
no matter how stupid cho looks (i refuse to watch the video on principle), a potential copycat will not think "cho looks dumb" but rather "i'll do a better job than cho." unstable, violent individuals desperate for attention will be motivated by the publicity cho has received. nbc has made it worse.

So many questions unanswered (randomly, off the top of my head):

Was Cho traumatized as an eight-year-old by his family's move to the United States? Was he again further traumatized by being uprooted from Detroit to Virginia? Was he bullied in school or picked on in any way, or consistelntly poked fun at? Was there something unusual in his nuclear family's behavior? Did the nuclear family notice either his social withdrawal or anger, and at what age did it begin? Was the family ever alarmed by any of his behavior?

Were Cho's parents contacted by Virginia Tech when their son had experienced troubles (expelled from class, referred for psychiatric counseling, special one-on-one instruction) and, if so, what was their level of involvement or lack of involvement? Was any of this dark behavior evident in high school? Did his parents sacrifice everything--such as spending meaningful time with their children--to live "the American dream?"

I think an interview with Cho's parents would be key and is currently missing. Hopefully, they will at some point in the future open up about their son.

Cho's parents lived in a $440,000 home, if I recall correctly, in Centreville, Va.--described by the media as an "upper middle class" dwelling. Do you have any idea what a $440,000 home means in San Antonio? And yet Cho lashes out at rich kids?

Remember, Cho sent the video to NBC. It's not as though NBC went out and created something lurid. News clips this morning on NBC's morning show of Cho's handiwork feature a remarkable similarity to the clips from the video created by the Columbine shooters. Another unanswered question: Why did Cho so identify with them? Why were these young males so filled with hate? As far as social dynamics, what does it mean to be part of a clique, or, conversely, an outsider? When did these young men first become involved with firearms?

The video by Cho opens up an important national discussion. I say this because a A-1 headline hre in the past week ran womething like this (paraphrasing): Massacre Shocks Nation. I'm sorry, but after numerous other school shootings, I'm no longer shocked: Virgina Tech is just another in a long line of school shootings which sadden and disgust.

As far as media, our paper has a new front page layout, introduced at almost exactly the time the Washington Post homepage changed its formatting. Many readers here dislike it greatly, according to the paper's ombudsman. With the new formatting, on both sides of A-1, there is a half-col on both the right and left, running down the full page-length to tease stories in the paper's various sections. To showcase the Cho story this morning, there was a change in format. On the right side of the page, above the fold, the right half-col is gone, to play up the Cho video and an image from the video. The left side half-col formatting stayed the same. This is strange.

Quick comments/questions: if the media did not or could not report on this story using all the available information and material, what *should* they be doing, and how should they be doing it?

If people don't watch, they won't stay in business long.

Personally, I've voted with my feet and chosen just a few news outlets for reporting on this story.

omni, I'll confess that I love ELO. Bombastically beautiful pop. Also saw them on that "Out of the Blue" tour as a very young man. The spaceship was cool, but not as cool as The Mothership. Oh, the 70's...

bc

Whether the video "demystifies" Cho can be debated; that NBC had one goal in mind in showing the video, given their terrible recent ratings period, cannot.

TMI, folks. *faxing the black light to the command center*

Yeah, Ivansmom. People are too quick to forget. Yet another event to reflect upon.

I'm glad that Cho Cho the choo-choo to cuckoo land was able to get so many guns. Shoot, to coin a phrase, people use words to express themselves and never get their fifteen minutes of fame. The message is, if you have guts to create a killing field, you will have your a moment of some kind of glory. Gory glory...

If Cowboy Cho was Gunworthy, who ain't?

I think the problem with airing the video and posting his photo on every news website is that it makes him a kind of celebrity. Clearly, he wanted people to see the video, and he sent it to a news station intending that he'd be watched and listened to following the massacre. The idea that he's getting his last wish is on a visceral level a bit nauseating.

Of course we want to know what drives people to do this sort of thing, and sure you can make the argument that "it shows he didn't have a brilliant reason for doing it, and that he was just crazy!" (were we really unsure of that?) But I don't know that his image and his words should be featured so prominently while it's much more difficult to find photos and information about the victims. This should be a time of respect and mourning for those who lost their lives. To instead put the focus on this profoundly mentally ill, violent young man just isn't in the best taste. There's plenty of time to delve into the killer's psyche, for all the good it will do us (it's not going to stop the next mentally ill person from doing whatever it is they're going to do, after all.) Personally, I would prefer if right now the focus was kept on the victims and the loss of their promising lives, and if this troubled young man were kept more in the background. Make the information available, but don't make him a celebrity.

That's certainly alliterative, George.

Informative, not so much.

Good points, Sirin. It's unfortunate that we are always focused on the *why* instead of who.

Two mini-rants:

I agree whole-heartedly with TBG that the appropriate reference to the victims is not "wrong place at wrong time" any more than they should be called "unlucky" or something like that.

Second, I hate in these circumstances the unintentional glorification of the murderer. So from now on, to me at least, I will call him Librescu's murderer.

On the tapes, I sought out news that had them last night, so there's one example of why the MSM does it. I err on the side of showing it. There was nothing like seeing Librescu's murderer talk about being forced into a corner to demystify that particular bogeyman.

Right after the tapes were shown the FBI guest said basically I wish you guys would stop showing the tapes because of the copy cat effect. I appreciate that position too; it is definitely real - IIRC we had an incident here in Alberta immediately post-Columbine.

Maybe showing the tapes should be banned during a cooling off period, but eventually disclosed after whatever period law enforcement experts are able to prove is necessary.

A $440,000 home in Centreville could be a very modest single family home or a townhouse. Like so many things about this, it's all about context. Yes VA Tech is a public school but people outside of VA probably don't realize just how many students within the state, who could go to Harvard or Yale or any number of elite private schools (based on ability and family wealth) choose instead to go to VT or UVA.

Having said that, I agree with the assessment made by Joel and others that there wasn't much logic to Cho's writings or video. This wasn't really about college debauchery, rich kids, or about Cho's parents. A disintigrating mind seems to latch on to things that people then try to use to explain the inexplicable.

I like that idea SoC. A cooling off period, would be good, when all the media could be presented without all the sorrow, and anger.

I think the unhealthy mind will take something out of the video that a healthy one would not.

Either way, I won't watch.

SCC-disintegrating mind

I feel sorry for everyone, the victims, their families, Mr Cho, and especially his family.

I understand why NBC aired the videos and the press is covering it. I just don't think that it is really helpful.

Son of Carl writes: "Right after the tapes were shown the FBI guest said basically I wish you guys would stop showing the tapes because of the copy cat effect." I appreciate that position too; it is definitely real - IIRC we had an incident here in Alberta immediately post-Columbine."

I wish that professional organizations representing law enforcement and psychology/mental health, respectively would sound off boldly about the immediate risk posed by copy catting. Let the Cho analysis take place in a professional setting, which will take time and thoughtfulness.

I always hate seeing legislation take the place of common sense and decency. Aren't we ready to applaud restraint in the media? I am.

Print has an advantage here over broadcast, and yes, we all tend to look on in horror, fascination, and perhaps addictively. Still! Manners, and both decorum and decency, coupled with the risks of copy catting would yield another decision-tree. Do not air.

I'm utterly digusted these images were broadcast. Just because you can broadcast them doesn't mean you should...Sensationalism at its worst...pathetic!

I heard about the tapes last night, but chose to turn off the TV instead. This morning, as I'm getting ready for work, the news carried a bit of it. My reaction was "Yes, we know he was mentally ill, but I really don't need to see this." Staring that pathology straight in the face was TMI.

Congratulations.

You and the other Media have played into Killer Cho's thinking perfectly: the widest possible platform to give him the Cult of Personality and Popularity that he so desperately wanted.

Stop it NOW -- and pull the plug on him.

Hundreds of other psychopaths have seen what he has gained from this, and sadly are waiting in the wings for their own 15 Minutes of Fame.

:(

i just sent a very critical email to nbc news. if any others feel they would like to do the same, here is the contact information:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10285339/

it's not completely clear to me which link was the best place to register my opinion, but the link for msnbc tv has this email: viewerservices@msnbc.com
which is what i ended up using.

The only argument I thought of in favor of the media's actions is the difficulty of keeping digital video completely under wraps. All it would take would be for one copy to be leaked and it would be all over the internet. Then it would be presented in the context of underground, forbidden information, which would make it more attractive to the very people who shouldn't see it.

SoC, a 14 years old kid in Taber killed a pair of his school collegue a few weeks after Columbine. It was thought of being a copycat at the time, although the kid was quite unwell.
I haven't looked at the video and doesn't intend to. By all reports the poor S0B just shows how far gone he was.

What does TMI mean? I'm really bad with Internet abbreviations.

My entire career I have been working on behalf of mental health causes. The stigma against mental illness is strong. Most people fear the mentally ill. Cho's video, pictues and rant only reinforce this attituce. Too often The mentally ill are vulnearble victimds and not perperators of horrendous crimes.

I wish post.com didn't have the picture of him so prominently on the page. I've sent an email to Jim Brady, but no response. The home page is different than the front page of a newspaper. I can't avoid the image on the homepage if I want to get to anything else. (Once you turn the page or go to a different section you don't have to confront A1 anymore.)

I've seen this picture over and over again this morning. I realize it's technically a picture of the picture being shown on tv at a bar, but it's still a big picture of the murderer that's completely unavoidable.

Please .com, give us someone or something else to look at!

Lunch done, I am stuffed
Sky report same, plus sprinkles
Now need cot for nap

Stop showing images from Iraq too. It makes me sad. Grow up America! This evil is part of our society. Pull the covers off of your heads and face the music!

Ivansmom, in this case it means Too Much Information.

Of course my first thought is always Three Mile Island (I lived near there when they had the partial meltdown)

I'm not saying I don't want to see these pictures at all. I watched NBC last night and saw them, but I'm sick of seeing the murderer's picture everytime I go to the website today. How about a slideshow of the victims instead?

While it seems to drop by the wayside so quickly, I think concern for the victims' families and survivors would be what most offends people. Not only is this giving him this final appearance as the glamorous (if deranged) action hero, but it also is giving all of us a view of what the victims' last sights must have been. I can see some of the reasons for publishing... but still it just sickens me that they did it with as much fanfare and feeling of prestige as they did.

As to Cho's rant, it is quite strange. If anything, Virginia Tech has a deep reputation for being down to earth instead of rich and snobby (see, e.g., the students all wearing hoodies and t-shirts around at all times). Especially confusing considering his sister went to Princeton. But I suppose attempting to decipher the logic of a pyschopath is too much to ask.

The airing of the Cho Manifesto gave me valuable insight into the nagging question "why would anyone do anything so horrible?" The piecemeal manifesto gave me first hand information that helps me understand a deranged mind and to piece together a pattern of an introverted personality feeding on egotistical self-inflation, what Carl Jung called the "Jehovah Complex." In the context of that interpretation of his madness, the manifesto itself becomes his memorial to himself.

The annoying part of the NBC/MSNBC reportage was the psycholbabble by the talking heads that ranted on and on. I would have been content to watch, read and listen to Cho, rather than to the blather of reporters who could make no sense of it. All they did was cloud my thinking by trying to impose their own. So, how it's done is as important as it being done - because I don't think censorship works.

It's quite obvious that this maniac's full intention was to become famous. He took all the photos and videos ahead of time and even sent them to the television studio knowing they would be posted in every newspaper, news program, online across not just the country but internationally. He manipulated the media and they are literally working for him now. He's dead but his legacy lives on. If the media did not make these people into superstars by plastering them all over the world, it would not be so appealing to do these things. The maniac obviously knew the media would do exactly what it did or he wouldn't have taken the time to send the info. This was purposely thought out and NBC played right into his hands. Even before that information came out all of the media plastered his photo for everyone to see. Do they not see this makes them famous and that is why they did what they did.

In addition, the media uses words like CARNAGE!!! What in the world are they thinking. If your family member had been murdered would you want them called CARNAGE! It sounds like a bunch of cows got slaughtered instead of human beings. It dehumanizes the horrible event.

Next you have the media telling the whole world where the maniacs family lives in detail down to which townhouse they live in. They go banging on their door so they can get the first comments out of these people who not only lost their son but who must be feeling shame from what has happened.

The more these kinds of events are exploited, the more they will happen. We as the readers, consumers, etc. who read and watch the news should stand up and take responsibility. Let them know we don't want to see this crap. What does it say about us if we continue to support this insanity? That if it was your family they were exploiting?

What's the message here? More mass murderers and deranged maniacs get their news from NBC News than from any other source... I guess that's why NBC needed to paste their logo on every pic of Cho? What are they, his sponser?

I didn't need to see the videos or the writing. However, they do reconfirm that this guy was extremely mentally ill. We've probably all passed people talking to themselves like this on the street, at sometime. We don't put their videos on the news. We see them as what they are, mentally ill. I can't imagine what it must have been like to be on campus that day or be a part of the families or friends of the victims. However to review these videos and commentate on them as if they were the work of someone who was mentally present doesn't help me understand why someone does something like this.

By releasing this material, NBC News is also opening itself up to a wrongful death lawsuit when someone does eventually copy Cho. They've clearly given other madmen an incentive to do something similar, so a copycat killing is a foreseeable result of their actions.

I think we already know we're on the home page.

A $440K house around DC is about average (median, anyway). Less than that and you're talking mostly condos and small townhouses.

There are similarities between Cho's poses in some of the pictures and in some particularly violent South Korean movies. Arguably Cho was acting the copycat as well. But still what he did was just plain not a rational act- mental chaos seems about a correct description.

I'm also saddened by the nonstop coverage with little breaks for any other news. I keep thinking of the phrase "Disaster Porn" when my wife has the TV on.

David Maraniss's blurb on the top of the WP front page talks about how "the unthinkable occurred" at Va Tech. If you scroll down and you'll see coverage of 158 killed by bombs in Baghdad on Wednesday alone. We can be really thankful 33 killed is a historic national tragedy.

I have been lately put in mind of Vonnegut's story with the character with thechemically unbalanced brain. Gotta look that one up again- was is BoC?

For what it's worth, I come down on the Scotty/Martooni, etc. side of the debate. Sure, for rational, emotionally stable people the videos expose Cho as a loser and diminish him but they give him a platform for his madness to be disseminated and how does that benefit anyone? I can't help thinking that the repeated broadcasting creates a perception of glorification to some segments of society. I can't bear to watch any of it.

TBG, I also felt stunned that the President referred to the students as being in the wrong place at the wrong time. An extremely poor choice of words, in my view.

LA lurker, thanks for that link.

I think not only should NBC post segments of it, they should make the whole package available on their website. Raw & unedited.

One of the things missing in the whole Great American Violence Debate is that most of the people have only an abstract sense of the carnage that happened there. Most people think they know what violence looks like because they watch "Law and Order" and "CSI". Show them a picture of a murderer, or better yet of his victim(s), or of the *real* aftermath of a suicide bomber or an IED, and they'll learn what the debate is really about. Violence is grotesque, appalling, viciously ugly and horrific to behold, but we get it fed to us as entertainment. Maybe it's time we saw *more* pictures of what happened, not fewer ones.

That said, I can barely look at the picture of Cho with the pistol to his head.

to those who object to the free market place of ideas good or bad or evil just remember the tv has an on off button. use it if you don't like what you see or hear but don't try to censor.

Jack...jacko...I need a handle today. Is pigpen taken?

I can't bring myself to watch the videos. I looked at one or two of the pictures and stopped. It made me ill. And I wish WaPo.com would remove the image (even the televised image) from the front-page.

Because it's simply disturbing to look into a person's madness.

People around him already recognized that he was ill, it was just that until Monday, Cho Seung-Hai had not done enough to impose a legal restraint on his actions.

We all know how to recognize when someone is not quite right. These pictures and videos do not really help us any. That he made them is important to understanding his mind set, but why do the general public need to see them?

To Paul Dawson: I DO use my button to turn it off. However, you can't go to the grocery store without seeing the front page of every newspaper. Unfortunately, the crazies DON'T turn theirs off and they are the ones that feed on this stuff and go immitate so they too can be famous!

vodka and cognac... how would he know debauchery if he never left his room? and last time i looked, when do college kids drink vodka and cognac on a regular basis? you get the cheapest beer you can sneak into the dorms by the case.

seems like he lived on campus throughout his years there... so he probably never left campus without a car, so what do the references to rich kids and mercedes have to do with? the parking lots are far from the dorms him being angry about rich kids and their material possessions makes no sense at all.

yes, paul, but expressing one's opinion about a "product" is part of the market economy and free speech as well.

IMHO, NBC was in a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" position. There are people that understandably cry "sensationalism," but there are also those that say they now have a degree of understanding that helps them cope. No one answer will satisfy everyone.

As for "last words," Cho has spoken his. We are all still talking. It will take far too long, but we will move past this tragedy. He never will.

As a college student myself (without ready access to TV), I confess that I've been obsessively checking the news sites for updates and developments. Even though I don't attend a school anything like Virginia Tech, the American college campus experience is uniform enough that it's really shocked us all, and I think we're all desperately trying to understand what happened. We are the generation that was in high school during Columbine and the rash of school shootings; we were always wondering if our school would be the next headliner. Now, just when we had forgotten about it...
It's true that I haven't gotten to see the news on TV. If they're airing it over and over on all the networks, that does seem like glorification. I think individual access to the video is important, but perhaps some restraint should be shown in airing them.
That said, I watched Cho's video, and I'm glad I had that opportunity. Perhaps NBC indulged his wishes by airing it, but I think Cho didn't realize how he would come across--he saw his manifesto as dark and stirring, when in fact it is pathetic and disturbed. I don't think it will cause any copycat incidents that wouldn't have happened otherwise. The Columbine shooters' personal stories weren't well publicized, if I remember correctly, and I don't remember getting to see their videos at all--and it did give them a certain mystique. After watching the video, I no longer think of him as "The VA Tech Massacre Gunman," as he'd like to be remembered, but simply Seung Cho, a profoundly paranoid and disturbed boy.

That's right, Cho's ramblings make no sense at all. That's the point. They're not going to make sense.

Byoolin has a point about the fictionalized TV depictions of violence. Crime scene photographs and video are not exciting. Often, they're banal. They're usually ugly, and sometimes they're just horrifying. After a career spent in criminal law I'll say that the visual aftermath of violence is never entertaining, and it isn't the way it looks on TV. However, I don't know that publication of more real-life scenes would help people understand what murder really is. Public executions didn't serve as a deterrent either.

As a Tech alumnus and former staff member, and whose wife is on the faculty, I can honestly say I was disgusted that the networks chose to air the videos.

They are certainly newsworthy. However, I suggest a few stills from the video along with transcripted quotations and summary descriptions would have been far more appropriate at this point and time, and would have served the purpose without being as insulting to the victims of this tragedy.

NBC and the other news outlets could have taken the high road, and said, "Out of respect for the victims and all those affected, we choose not to air the killer's final message at this time." However, in pursuit of ratings and in playing to the general sensationalism of our culture's "news" media, they chose to show the video, and to show it repeatedly, which only gave in to Cho's beyond-the-grave wishes to cause even more hurt.

After hearing reports from Cho's room and suitemates, fellow students and professors, that he didn't talk, didn't respond, I find it amusing that now that he has talked, so many people are saying "I don't want to see it, I don't want to hear it." The avoidance of mental illness is not curative, nor is mental illness contagious. The copycats don't catch it from other losers - they've already got it.

On my way to work today, I was actually stopped and interviewed by the local CBS affiliate's camera crew about this. I didn't have much to say, because I hadn't actually heard about the footage at the time.

What are the odds that a "copycat killer" would kill anyway if they didn't have an original crime to copy? Have psychologists actually looked at this issue in anything like a scientific way? I mean, it's so **easy** to call somebody a "copycat", but are they copying the crime or just the language?

Until I actually have hard data on that, I can't say whether or not "copycats" pose a real risk or how big that risk might be.

I'm completely appalled by the airing of Cho's "manifesto." Briefly summarizing the contents of his videos and documents would have sufficed as "news." Broadcasting the deranged killer's twisted diatribes and studied poses does not inform, it bestows celebrity, acclaim.

I've turned off all t.v. news since the photos, etc., began airing. To call it an affront to the families of the victims is an understatement. Giving Cho the public forum to air his rants is cruel to the victims and irresponsible to society.

Honoring the public's right to view and see the information sent to NBC could have been responsibly served by making portions available in transcript format on the web.

I hear what you're saying, Shiloh and I'm sure you're right that mentally ill people are already mentally ill, they can't *catch* it. But doesn't the airing of these videos (and the constant repetition) serve to continue a steady erosion of simple common decency and good taste? Is that too simplistic of me? I don't think I'm avoiding mental illness by refusing to view utter madness in all it's horror on my tv.

Omni, its when the sky sprinkles turn white and fluffy looking you have to watch out.

Since it's too damp to garden by the bunker, I'm going to get a head start on the throw pillows.

Also, yes, I'm choosing to turn off my tv and other's can make a different choice, this is America, after all.
I still believe that this kind of media exposure is sensationalism, pure and simple.

It's a crying shame - a crying shame NBC has allowed their moral compass to go so far off course. What a shameful, shameful organization.

There is no way in hell NBC can justify airing this in the wake of such a horrible, horrible thing. I don't want to hear any released statement from PR how they thought long and hard about releasing this video. When in doubt on an issue like this, don't do it! Your better judgement should take over!

But these are the very people running our corporations in America. These are the very people are kids are preparing themselves to go work for?

The irony in all this is the very people our kids are preparing themselves to work for, are turning out to be the very ones who still haven't learned a very basic tenet of life; "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you!" Which one of the NBC execs would think twice about airing that video had it been one of his/her children or nephew or niece!!

In their attempt to further crucify the kid who committed these horrible murders and publicize his insanity, they've only deepened the wounds and hurt of those who are and will be mourning for years.

What has happened to us?

A persistent symptom of many mental illnesses is the person's lack of awareness of their illness and their assumption that their delusional thinking represents reality. The patients' rights movement of the 60s and 70s has prevented some abuses of involuntary commitment, but what it has also done is make our criminal justice system one of the primary providers of mental health care in this country. Until these laws reflect more of the reality of the treatement needs of the mentally ill and strike more of a happy medium between patient rights and patient and society protection, these types of cases will recur. In addition, homelessness and victimization of those mentally ill individuals who are not violent will also continue.

Of course, laws that make it so easy to obtain guns also contribute to the large numbers of people killed in these cases. But then, as we saw in Oklahoma City, bombs can accomplish the same thing. A change in laws regarding mental health treatment, prevention, and education as to what mental illness is and how to do something about it will ultimately be the answer for this type of problem, in my opinion.

I have been weighing on whether to watch the video or not.
I haven't turned my TV on because I don't want to see it.
I was reluctant to turn my computer on because I know it will be everywhere.
I enjoy this blog very much and have come to repsect every opinion I read here.
I don't think NBC should have aired this video or the pictures.
But I understand that they have some sort of obligation to do so.
But it could have been done some other way.

I have be sickened by this whole terrible mess.
How can anyone who comitts such a deplorable act be deemed anything but mentally unstable.

I can't help to think about the victims in this. The mothers and fathers, the brothers and sisters, the friends
and families, the communities of many people grieving over this terrible tragedy.
They needed to be spared of this rant by a madman.

Let us continue the process of giving comfort and sympathy to the many affected by this tragedy.

Airing these videos is pandering to our worst voyeuristic tendencies; they reveal nothing of importance. They should have been locked away for future study, although I think it unlikely that they would have revealed anything of importance. Just a portrait of a vicious, extremely disturbed boy who destroyed countless lives.
I hope this doesn't turn into another Anna Nicole circus, but I wouldn't bet against it.
I would much prefer to read the short stories, poems, and research studies of his many victims. How much has been lost. As for the shooter, I don't even want to see his face or hear his voice--why give him any of our time at all?--after all, that's EXACTLY what he wanted; he even took a break from killing just to ensure that he recieved this type of media exposure.
Forget him: Remember the victims of his cruelty.

Frankly, Kim, I watched the Cho Manifesto reports, on a piecemeal basis, once and have not gone back to them. Once was enough to reach a personal conclusion. I think that after one airing the media should provide a link for those who have not seen it, and want to - or for those who salivate at self immersion in another man's madness, despair and egomania. Cinema verite' has quite a following. As I recall, the number of hits on the videos of the hanging of Saddamm Hussein indicated that some people have a salacious taste for indecency and bad taste. That's part of the human condition.

Well, you're certainly right about that, Shiloh.

Les' 12:40 p.m. posting about Vonnegut got me to thinking...that and Jake Gyllenhaal's "Zodiac" movie release earlier this year.

If I recall correctly, the first letters to the San Francisco Chronicle from the Zodiac were printed on the inside pages, but rapidly moved to the front page? of course, in this case, and with the Unibomber, the newspapers were trying to assist in apprehending the killers. I wonder how the London newspapers handled their coverage of Jack the Ripper?

But Les's post got me to thinking about deranged, mentally ill killers in fiction. How long was Thomas Harris' "Silence of the Lambs" on the bestseller list? How much did the film version of the book with Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins eventually gross? The "liver and chianti" phrase seems to be a running joke here at the Achenblog. I'm turning to Google...

http://www.imdb.com/boxoffice/alltimegross?region=world-wide

It comes in at 187 on this list, with a total boxoffice take of about $272M and five Academy Awards nominations.

http://www.powells.com/biblio?isbn=0312924585

From this website, we learn that the 1988 "Silence of the Lambs" sold more than 5 million copies.

Seems we lap up stories about mental derangment and murder in fiction just fine. It's when they're real, we turn our heads away in horror. Go figure.

Call me a cynic but when NBC states that they had a tough decision whether to air the material that decision was based solely on how much revenue they would garner. I would like to know whether and what they charged other media outlets to show *their* footage. I wouldd also like to know how much they charged advertisers for ad placements during their *scoop* and whether the rates were at a premium.

It's the ratings, Chris, that determine the revenue in the media business - and it is a business and not a charity. NBC anguished over whether the airing would help or hurt their ratings. Nothing competes with the superbowl for revenue. You're a cynic.

Loomis, I suppose I would argue we don't turn our heads away, though I wish sometimes we would.

I remember being at a relative's place years ago that had some strict rules about what was allowed on television (they had small children). One evening they flipped on the tube. First channel had a (fictional) crime show, we saw a man being shot, so click to the next channel. There we saw a (fictional) murder scene being discovered with a few bodies strewn around. Then a click to the next channel, and there the TV stayed... watching a news report about the then-recent Pan Am Flight 103 bombing.

There is a part of me that still doesn't understand why a couple of fictional murder shows are not valid ways to spend time but non-fiction about 270 murders was. So it goes, I guess.

Ivansmom said it very well, Loomis. Real crime isn't as flashy or dramatic as it's made out in fiction.

It bothers me too, the appetite for endless Law and Order and such things. We have a certain appetite for moral drama and revenge those shows may provide.

My major objection is not that NBC aired it, for I can turn off NBC... I was just being sacrastic about how they are responding to the opportunity so readily.

However, do I NEED to see Cho's pictures or videos promimently displayed when I try and check my e-mail and look up what else is going on?

Do I need to have shows interrupted without schedule updates, or even a timer displayed on the news updates for how long those news interruptions will take?

And on the internet, what's wrong with a link to all that material from the home page, no pictures?

I mean, it's discourteous to those who may want to opt out from further coverage, whether victim, kin, people with PTSD, or any kind of reason.

It's been over 3 days now. It's time to concede to the victims' sensibilities as funeral plans progress, by balancing coverage as to give people the choice to tune out altogether.

No one needs to see this garbage. As the above poster said, forget him, remember the victims and their families.

there's no need to glorify this kid. this is EXACTLY what he wanted. releashing one or two of the pictures and putting them in the paper fine. as FRONT PAGE NEWS, not really. HE is not front page news. he is a coward. front page news is the courageous professors who saved lives of students at the cost of their own. THAT'S front page news. Run pictures of them, they deserve to have the world now their names. Not this awful coward of a man that was on every front page this morning. His name shouldn't even be published.

Turning to a deeper churning controversy, Weingarten promised his chat would be back up in April. Only one Tuesday to go.

Weingartenologists have unearthed a page from the WaPo website that hints there may be one at least scheduled for next Tuesday:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/NewsSearch?sb=-1&st=weingarten&

As a young adult just out of college, what bothers me the most about the pictures and makes me break down and cry is not so much the phsychological mindset it shows him in but the reference to the video game Counter Strike. He could be a character right out of that game (a internet game based on either being a terrorist group or counter-terrorist force trying to take them out), or nearly any other violent first person shooter games that are out there. Even his choice of weapons strikes me. Many of the more expert players in Counter Strike choose hand guns over automatic weapons for accuracy and speed. In my mind there is too much of a connection between him most likely playing these games and wanting to act them out in some sort of deluded fantasy.
His rant against the Rich and so on is something that you see on almost any college campus, even state schools where the majority of the population are not rich or even upper-middle class. At any school you will see kids whose parents spoil them rotten, buy them brand new cars, clothes and alcohol with out a care in the world. It seems to be his justification for acting out his fantasy of being one of these video game characters out by shooting at living people around him. Some how though he could not differentiate between the fantasy of games he played and how one is responsible for acting in the real world.
While I believe that NBC was not necessarily wrong in choosing to release the videos and images, for me they prove something I assumed about the young man from when I first heard about the shootings on Monday and I know everytime I see any of those pictures I cry because of what has happened and why.

I heard something this morning on WTOP radio that really bothered me. They identified by full name, twice, Cho's sister (her last name is different). Where did that come from and where do they get off announcing it to their considerable audience? They even, more or less, said where she works and that they left a voicemail message but she hadn't called them back. Gee, I can't imagine why not. Given the raw, potentially hateful emotions provoked by an event like this, I'd call it irresponsible, if not downright reckless, to give out that info when they can't show it has any real relevance beyond morbid curiosity.

And the producer concludes by saying he wishes he had never seen any of it.....

Yeah, me too. But CNN and the other networks have made sure that doesn't happen. Nice. Kill 32 people, get a nationwide forum. I am sure the families of the dead are big fans of the coverage. Journalism? Please. Jackalism is more like it.

I haven't read all the comments, but I definitely agree with Martooni. It is sensationalism, particularly because the video and pictures have been displayed over and over again. When I turned on the news last night after getting home from class, I hadn't heard about the video yet. I turned it on in the middle of the video playing, and I have not been able to get the images or the sounds of Cho's voice out of my head since. I absolutely did not need to hear that (in fact, if I hadn't have turned it on in the middle of the video, I would have switched the channel). The only people who really need to "understand" that video and those images are law enforcement. Leave the rest of the country, particularly the Virginia Tech community, to grieve and heal.

I disagree with the decision to air the video--maybe at VT where they have a right to "demystify" the issues but mainstream media added nothing that was not already known other than confirming his location at 9:01 am.

Like so many other crimes, this one will take weeks to sort out (his mental health history, the relevant details from his life prior to VT and during his college stay) Only then will we know what it means, so let the investigators do their work and stop expecting a sound-bite size answer.

The students and faculty at VT dealing with this tragedy are among the classiest people I've ever seen. For now, I'd prefer to follow the example of the students around the country who have expressed support to them: the grieving friends and family of the victims, students and the troubled man who did this awful thing. We should all be so lucky to be Hokies...

And the best way I think to play down the legendification (if you will) of this sad pathetic boy is to put up a big picture of Librescu with the simple headline: Hero dies to save class. This man did something amazing that is almost unimaginable.

Hey, Boodle--just checking in from Miami. Had dinner last night at Joe's Stone Crab--was terrific. Never had stone crabs before (they just serve the claws and first knuckle), sdo basically all you're eating is the claw meat. I'm told when they harvestthe stone crabs, they break off the claw and through the crab back; it regenerates a new claw after three or four years. Interesting.

Regarding the bunker and the shop steward's office: scotty, Padouk, when I get back I think we're going to have to adopt an old Vietnam tactic: in order to save the office where going to have to destroy it. So far I can't think of a "Plan B."

I only caught about three minutes of the Cho thing on ABC this morning, and I think I'm glad I don't have time to post much. I think about two-thirds of all the comments here are absurd or ridiculous on one level or another. Just a few "basic" common sense obervations:

1) It is NOT a news organization's job or mission to REFRAIN from printing/breoadcasting news. When you suggest otherwise, JUST WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU THINKING? This was the worst shooting in U.S. history--and you want NBC to NOT broadcast one of the single-most relevant aspects of it? Are you people out of your minds? Do you understand NOTHING?

2) The suggestion was made to delay or hold off broadcasting this stufrf, or shoiwing it in some "more appropriate" venue. Once again? Are you NUTS? Do you want the news media sitting around deciding when and where it and it alone thinks is the appropriate place to broadcast something? The media's job is to put news out before the entire public, not just some small segment "it" thinks is appropriate. You want to media to withhold news about, oh, Iraq because you don't think it's pleasant? You want the media to refrain from covering Gonzalez because it's bad for the country's morale to see that it's leading law enforcement office is a corrupt moron?

You don't refrain from broadcasting news because people won't "like" it. Jeeeeez. If you don't "like" it, if it offends you in some bizarre way, THEN DON'T FREAKING WATCH IT. Some of you have said you have deliberately not watched it. That's one of the few things anybody's said that makes some sense.

3) The statement has been made that it should be shown only once or twice, then stopped. Yes, there's quickly going to become a point where it's going to be (massive) overkill--but what you are suggesting is that something unpleasant should only be shown between 8 and 9 a.m. EST for those of you for whom that single time slot is convenient--and all the rest of us can go to hell. Well, thanks, but no thanks.

4) The copycat question is unfortunate...but once again unsolvable. By definition, a copycat is basically as nuts as the original perp. How far do you want to carry it? We should refrain from broadcasting ANY news about ANY crime on the very slim chance that some other idiot out there might do the same thing? Perhaps we should never have printed and broadcast anything about the Kennedy Assination because it may have led some idiot like Squeeky Fromm or that housewife who took a shot at Ford, or the idiot who shot George Wallace. Anybody in favor of keeping the JFK thing super hush-hush? Should we refrain from having TV shows about Jack the Ripper? How far do we take this trend? Should we not have broadcast news about Kenneth Lay and Enron on the grounds that it may encourage other copycat CEOs to defraud their stockholders/ Because that certainly seems to have happened. And do you really want the news media deciding when to withhold unpleasant stories for fear of copycats. Yes, copycat crimes will occur--that's the *&$%#@ price you pay for a free media and a free society. Now grow the hell up.

People have used the word "pandering" and accused NBC of thinking only of its bottom line, etc. This is absurd. It's their *^%$# JOB to show news--and if you think this isn't news then you just plain don't know what news is--and although you have a right to your opinion your opinion is both uninformed and worthless. What you want is for NBC to have said, "We've received this big packet of information from the killer. It shows he's a whack job and out of his mind. But we aren't going to show it to you--you'll just have to take our word for it that we're right." In short, you want NBC to sound exactly like the Bush Administration. Weapons of mass destruction? Oh, you'll just have to take our word for it. Saddam linked to 9/11? Trust us, there's a link--we just can't tell you about it." C'mon, think, people, think, don't just vent your visceral reactions. Think the problem through first.

As for the notion that NBC or any other corporate business has a "moral compass," which it now seems to have "lost," gimme a break here, Andrew. Just who and what do you imagine you're talking about? It's a giant communications company, fer crissakes. You think it has or ever had a moral compass? What planet are you living on? As for its news division, it was just doing its job. To me that means it was following its "moral compass" pretty damn well. What is it about news organizations that you clearly don't understand? Because there's a few people here who can probably explain it to you.

That 2:33 post is one the most ill-mannered posts I've ever seen. I'm outta here.

I'll grant you most of your heartfelt post, Mudge. I still quarrel with the idea that the contents of the package are themselves "news" in the same sense that, say, the fact of the package and its posting clearly were.

Right on, Cur.

As a side note - the incidence of left clawed stone crabs is about the same as left handed humans. And fishing regs in Florida only allow the taking of the larger claw - to give the crab regeneration defense and feeding time.

Actually I think Librescu's life was even more amazing than his death, That guy.
He survived the Holocaust in a ghetto while his father was interned in a labor camp, got his PhD at age 39, later got out of Romania when it was a very grim place under Ceausescu, became an Israeli citizen, and then for the last 22 years he was teaching here in America.

He was also a very prolific scientist and engineer, publishing many articles on his research in fluid mechanics, material science, and aerodynamics. He had many honors and memberships in various organizations (including shipbuilding), and was a member on the editorial board of seven scientific journals.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liviu_Librescu#_note-6

That's a life story that's hard to imagine, either.

I think he'd have died a hero to those who knew him well even if he had never been shot to death trying to stop an insane gunman entering his classroom.

(See, even engineering nerds can be heroes!)

Curmudgeton ill-mannered? No, he simply knows how to take out the trash.

All the more reason for an article about him to be given more space than a picture of the murderer

Let's not make a fetish out of the a-blog's civility. Sometimes people have strong opinions, and have the right to express them, forcefully. Things would get a little dull here if Mudge had to curb his enthusiasm.

Some thoughts after reading Mudge's comments.

If more information had been released earlier I wonder if we'd have our thriving JFK Assassination Conspiracy Theory cottage industry.

I bet the Court TV execs are wishing things had ended differently.

I don't mind what Mudge wrote, but he's going a little heavy on the all-caps and making himself sound terminally crabby.

I guess you ARE what you eat.

In that case, we should expect him to sound a little stoned next, I guess. Groovy.

For those just joining us...Curmudgeon is, of course, a newsman, and newspersons, I'm guessing, are much, much, much more likely than normal people to support NBC on this.

But it's a tough call. NBC is obviously facing a huge backlash. And no, NBC doesn't charge other media for using this stuff.

Lots of great comments here today. Even a couple that agree with me!

On the question of remembering the victims rather than the killer, you can find this on the home page:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/metro/vatechshootings/victims/index.html?hpid=topnews

I agree with Mudge that NBC and other media have to show what they got. That is their primary function, showing stuff to get ratings. However, it seems to me that some media are on a All Cho All the Time mode. That doesn't seem right to me. There are other things happenings. Since I don't want to listen to the madman there is a couple of networks that are off my list for a while.
I was living downtown Montreal when the province tried to de-institutionalized as many mental patients as they could so I have already heard as much crazy ramblings as I can stomach.

'Mudge;

I see where you're coming from. I'm amazed that I disagree with you.

We disagree on whether or not the videos and photos are newsworthy. I will not accept a viewpoint (and I don't think you're suggesting) that news organizations have no choice but to regurgitate everything everything that comes into their possession. When the OK City bombing happened (as we're reminded by coverage of the anniversary), I was a news editor of a daily newspaper. I'm glad I helped the paper decide NOT to run a front-page version of the photo of the firefighter carrying the lifeless baby; the photo of the overall destruction at the Murrah building said all that needed to be said.
The parallel here is that we already knew from the police investigation, the writings they recovered and that Cho submitted in class, and from eyewitness accounts, that he was insane. The police themselves have said today the NBC package adds nothing to their investigation. There was no "news" there, and NBC would have been justified in saying, "The contents of this package only repeat what's already been uncovered."

Here's a crazy thought: Tonight on NBC Brian Williams could announce that they're not going to show any more of the videos or photos. That no more is necessary.

The All Cho All The Time problem is one that's been with us for quite some time -- at least since the Simpson trial but probably much longer than that. I'm not sure what the solution is. Other than voting with your clicker.

Well Mudge, why not just show some brains scattered about while we're at it? I didn't have much choice about it watching it, I was stuck in a waiting room where they run these crappy daytime shows.

And for the record, I've never seen "Silence of the Lambs", "CSI:Anything" or "House" for that matter because my taste doesn't turn to gore and pain. But being in the minority on this in America doesn't surprise me much, or Quinton Tarantino wouldn't be so popular.

Bloody good thing you didn't have time to post much. Is a little sense of decency too much to ask from corporations who have a license to use the public airwaves?

Normal people hear and see this info glut on VTech's assasin and either sympathize because he was mentally ill or see him as a loner. Other similarly deranged males do not. For them he is a hero because he carried out their fantasy and got all this attention and his videos are a direct challenge to do him one better just as he did the Columbine shooters.

I see no value in the public viewing of this deranged young man's inner life. Perhaps they're of help to psychiatrists, but for the rest of us this aids in becoming even more desensitized to violence. This is especially obscene considering that we don't even know who all the dead are yet.And I hate to think of the effect all these photos and videos have on small children.

If there was less glorification and sensationalization of mass murderers and serial killers there would probably be fewer of them. Instead let's focus on detection, prevention, the wounded and dead,the courageous and their loved ones.

May God have mercy on all of us.

Scottynuke: The killer in the worst civilian shooting incident ever in the U.S. went to great lengths to create a manifesto and sends it NBC News at a time when everyone is still grappling with how this could have happened. This is not news? NBC and other news outlets have to air this, and note that it's clear they haven't aired everything. But it's a critical part of the story of who this shooter is and how he acted prior to the shooting and during the planning of it.

The questionable judgment, in my mind, is the way the material is presented. Look at the MSNBC home page yesterday with its grabbing "KILLER SPEAKS" headline. Look at my hometown paper with a collage of four massive gun-, knife-, and hammer-wielding photos. This is tabloid and sensationalistic. But the airing of the material is not.

This is not easy stuff to look at -- it becomes more cringe-worthy when it's salaciously splashed on front pages -- but I don't think we should confuse that with the question of whether NBC and others should air it all.

A little restraint would have helped, but I think the news orgs would have been extraordinarily irresponsible if they had NOT aired the footage.

No, Patrick, the contents of a repeat of the manifesto, even in a "new" multimedia form, were not and are not news. By this logic, if he had sent a Powerpoint version to Al Jazeera and a VHS tape the BBC main office, each outlet would have to air them when they received them, even though NBC already did.

How many times to we have to watch the planes hit the towers? Back in the day, newspapers eventually wrapped around fish or burned. Horrible headlines and images were "out there" but were to some degree escapable. I worked for a newspaper in Pennsylvania when a public official shot himself in front of the press. The decision about what to run (photo?) was quick: don't run the photo. To this day I'm proud the paper made the right call. Today a young Asian man in a fast car rode my bumper into work. My mind could not help but make an association that does not exist but is irretrievable. Depictions of violence seldom incite peace....

Blake at his blog talks about being interviewed on the street about the VA Tech (and links here, so what goes around comes around):

http://www.sunclipse.org/?p=42#comment-82

How many people saw the original NBC Nightly News broadcast last night? Call me crazy: I thought they weren't sensational. There was no KILLER SPEAKS sort of stuff. Brian Williams put it all in context, showed a color copy of the envelope NBC received, said they understood they were giving a murderer a platform, brought on Pete Williams, they showed some of the video -- and to my knowledge they've still showed only portions of it -- and at no time did it seem like tabloid TV to me. I thought it was very professional. But I have no doubt that a lot of the media have gone berserk over this and that saddens me.

Count me in the camp that agrees with airing Cho's video, at least in part. Repression and banning of an idea, a notion, a belief, a publication, makes it stronger -- it tells those that hold such ideas that the power structure is frightened and weak, ready to collapse. Our greatest strength as a society is that we can air such lunacy in a public medium, turn to each other, and ask "So, whadda ya think of that guy?"

If you fear encouraging the already-crazy, it is my belief that they get much more encouragement from the idea that Cho had hold of a 'truth' that the weak and small-minded couldn't handle. They can cherish this notion and, in the absence of any real information, they can imagine it to be whatever idea they themselves want to be 'true.' The not-yet crazy, on the other hand, can look at his video and say "whoa, hey, that's not the road for me." And the altogether-not-crazy (is there anybody in this category? Certainly not on the 'net) can see the video and glean a sense of what crazy looks like. There has been a lot of complaining about people failing to respond to 'the warning signs.' You're being presented with a spectactular case example of what the warning signs look like: watch it, memorize it, ponder and consider it. Or, shut up and stop complaining that others were too self-involved to take the proper steps. *You* are one of those *others* for somebody. Taking the 'proper steps' is your job as much as it is anybody else's, so make the effort to educate yourself on how to do your job well.

I think it was quite useful to air Cho's video. One thing that is manifest is the absolute rage Cho expressed. People need to see that. They need to see the look in the eyes of a man who has gone over the edge. They need to understand the thoughts of a person about to kill 30 people. Why? To recognize it the next time they see it, and help stop it.

Further, it seems quite likely to me, based on the plays Cho wrote, coupled with the rage he clearly expressed in his video, that he had been sexually abused. That would go a long way to explaining what he did, and add to our knowledge of what causes this sort of rampage. The bottom line is, we need to see and analyze whatever information we have on this individual, in order to recognize it when somebody like Cho comes along again.

Long time lurker, recent poster.

Mr. Curmudgeon, are you okay? There's a definite shift in the tone of your posts over the past few months showing far less tolerance and lots more vehemence on a variety of topics.

We are seeing the same response here in Seattle at The Stranger's SLOG, where most people think the media is helping create more such incidents by giving such people more than their share of attention. - Now all you have to do is slaughter a few people and the media will broadcast your manifesto for free and let you go out in a blaze of glory. - SICK! SICK! SICK! - Those in the Media who condone this should be ashamed of themselves.

Yes, there's a difference between reporting it, and spreading the gory details. Yesterday I questioned the rationale for releasing this video. While there's "less mystique" to somebody so completely exposed as insane, that is not necessarily the primary function of a news program.

If this was the Watergate tapes, that's one thing because it reveals the true character of a president that was already in office and had power to affect the country's future. It was news.

I admit, I'd love to get some behind-the-scence recording of what's going at the White House-- they're in charge of Iraq, which is going poorly.

Maybe if we knew more about what they are actually doing, we'd be able to come up with better solutions than the same old *** we're being handed.

But how does the heavy emphasis on Cho's manifesto etc. makes it more newsworthy? This is not something that might be used to catch a killer (unlike with the unabomer), nor does his ramblings really have any chance of changing national policy.

The ONLY possible value I can see in it is to see how an mentally ill person stages a manifesto before committing the deed. It might be of use to psychotherapists, profilers, and other mental health and criminal professionals.

But for us who aren't that sophisticated in mental illness issues and the difference between paranoid and other schizophrenia, and the treatment prognoses for those disorders... it could lead us to be afraid of anybody who rambles and acts mentally ill.
People dealing with schizophrenia already have problems enough without THAT.

The 9/11 coverage, although one of the biggest news ever, was covered very graphically and intensively.

That did lead to somebody assaulting an afghan national less than 3 blocks from my home, and other people killing Sikhs as "Afghans", because the strong, constant coverage made people want to revenge themselves somehow.

9/11 was used as justification for invading Afghanistan (fine-- it made sense anyway), and then for Iraq.

One can argue if we all hadn't seen the most lurid 9/11 images over 100 times per American, maybe we wouldn't be in Iraq right now.

I myself was at the Pentagon less than a hour before 9/11, saw the plane in it, smelled the smoke for 3 days. I never want to smell that again. I knew people who had been inside the Pentagon that day, and somebody who had gotten out of the WTC.

Even so, I (and most of NYC and DC) was much less willing to invade Iraq or support Bush's plan of vengence than people in other areas who had only experienced 9/11 through the news.

I certainly heard from some of them-- all ready to give up their and others' civic liberties in order to be "safe".

There ain't no such thing as 100% safe.

There's no way in the world the Patriot Act would have prevented this guy from going crazy. He could have obtained his US citizenship 3-5 years before the attack if he had bothered to do so.

The Patriot act wouldn't have prevented Columbine or the OK city bombings, either.

Anyway, I don't know what the answer is, but I think it starts with not airing graphic images 24/7 without strong advisories so people can change the channel.

Posted by: jacko | April 19, 2007 12:29 PM

Bravo on a great post jacko.

As a VT alumnus, I have been following this far more than I would otherwise. I'm a very jaded person who understands why all of this happens. I, too think it is quite disturbing to see the videos. I want to see them because I have a deep interest in the human psyche but really the average person doesn't need to see it because of the risk of encouraging other emotionally unstable people.

Ironically, the people who don't want to see the videos are NOT the people who shouldn't see the video.

One of the real tragedies is that it had to happen on campus. When I first went to VT the thing that I really noticed was that people there (as any university) in my experience treated everyone as adults as opposed to grade school and high school where kids were picked on and judged.

John, I don't think you are more in a position to make a diagnostic than the hundreds of long-distance psychiatrist out there.
The networks seem to have agreed to go easy on the Cho Show anyway.
http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2007/04/19/video-virginia.html

In the mean time a number of seal hunters are stranded on the ice pack.
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/index.html
Not an easy life for those vilified hunters. I wonder if PETA would organize an expedition out there to club them out of their misery. hehehe

The media needs to re-think their coverage of incidents such as this. Focusing on the shooter tends to glorify his actions. Airing his info-mercial is downright irresponsible as it paves the way for more Cho's (just as Columbine influenced Cho). Let's focus on the heinousness of his crime, rather than allowing an obviously disturbed person to speak from the grave.

I'm with Scotty still...I'm shocked because I don't think I've ever disagreed with Mudge before!

As I said this morning, what was NBC supposed to do? They had news (and evidence) literally handed to them; they contacted the authorities and reported on it.

As far as some news outlets overreporting specualtion or conjecture, or sensationalizing information or images that could be deemed appropriate, well, there is that downside to a free press.

I think journalists would rather work here than in, say, Russia for example.

The press *is* still free in this country, and we consumers are free to exercise our judgement and will as well. With those freedoms comes responsibility, on both sides of the equation. The news organizations are responsible for what they produce and we consumers are responsible for what we consume.

bc

loomis brings up an interesting point. Who among us has not slowed to look ever. Somewhere out there someone studied this phenomenon in humans. IIRC, an article in the SciAm last fall. I'd go searching but I am supposed to be at work.

Thanks for the reminder on things Weingartien.

The media package was meant to self-memorialize the planned massacre and make Cho a posthumous celebrity of the very type he most idolized. Is it news? Yes. Should it be a front page, OhMyGosh commentary, super-rotation, repeat-cycle frenzy? NO. That's what *makes* a celebrity. Celebrities spawn imitators. We are creating our own super-monsters out of our borderline psychos. Granted, said monsters will do what they do and find what information they can (including video games), but at least make 'em work for it. Obviously, a sick mind has trouble both locating and processing information - why spoonfeed a plotline and then refine and second-guess it *for* them?

Oh, BOO. While I slowly type, 10 other people post the same thing, better put.

"Yeah. What they said."

Back into lurkdom.

The audience dictates what the media gives it, correct? Doesn't the public WANT to know what happened? Isn't that why so many of us are glued to the news reports, the papers, the web and blogs like this one so that we know what's going on as soon as it happens? Don't viewers of these news broadcasts demand this kind of immediate information all the time? If we didn't watch, didn't expect it, maybe it would stop. Like Joel said, we could vote with our clickers.

I'm 100% with Mudge. Had NBC supressed Cho's media package for even a week the resulting outcry would be unreal.

Of course this is news. This is big news. Cho was a killer. No, Cho was a mass murderer. What happened at VA Tech was the most lethal shooting in American history. IN AMERICAN HISTORY. And Cho is dead. Airing his effects does Cho no good now. He can't relish in the media circus he created with half of his face blown off.

I am one of those people who wants to know everything about Cho. Anything about him is news to me - even his nonsensical rants. I want to read every word - two word phrases like "deceitful charlatans" doesn't really cut it for me. I want to see interviews with his parents, his sister. I want to see interviews with his high school teachers, classmates. Possibly someone in this country who is seeing Cho's face on the news for the first time in years will remember that kid from the 7th grade and come forward and speak. It seems Cho never had a friend in his entire life. Maybe we'll find out.

I appreciate all of the Virginia Tech students, professors and administrators who have agreed to be interviewed following the tragedy. Their stories should be heard, no matter how harrowing.

looks like NBC did exactally what Cho wanted.

But which 10 people, sevenswans? ;). Always glad to hear from you.

And PLS. Long time no post.

Dr, that tendency to be fascinated with gore is not unique to humans. Deer, cattle and other prey animals will sometimes stop and investigate the dead remains of conspecifics killed by predators.

It's thought the morbid curiosity/fear is "essential" to help the deer recognize the smell and the habits of those who would hunt them-- what killed this deer, what do they need to fear... since a learning from direct encounter with a wolf or lion is unsafe.

Unfortunately this behavior can be dangerous as well, which is why deer and other do so cautiously-- much more cautiously than humans.

Imagine if they didn't.

Now visualize deer congregating like humans at a road traffic accident. "He was jumping along, this big monster came by, and BAM! He never stood a chance!" "My Dear!" "Look at the impact marks!"

You'd have the roads tied up with mobs of deer everyday.

This on NBC now, 36 schools on lock down in California while they search for a "self promoted" potential copy cat.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18203613/

Cho wanted a platform and the news obligingly gave it to him -- not that that really matters to Cho now. The scary thing is that by airing Cho's material, those who may consider following in his footsteps will be encouraged to do so, in the belief that they, too, will have their after-death wish of publically airing their grievance fulfilled.

I think it's normal to feel a sense of "what can we do to prevent this from happening again?" and try to exert some control over these incomprehensible, unforeseeable acts of violence. For some, that means learning all we can about the perpetrator, and demystifying him and exposing him as the mentally ill, inadequate personality type he was (so that nobody views him as "glamorous.") For others, it means not giving him any attention or air time, so that future perps won't get the idea that killing people is a quick and easy way to get "famous." The fact is, though, that Cho isn't around to enjoy his fame, so it's kind of pointless to say that we're "giving him what he wants."

We can't control the thought processes of the mentally ill, and there will be future events as bad or worse as this one, more people will die, someone may even cite Cho as their inspriration. There are sick people who have a thought process that doesn't respond to reason, there are people with empathy disorders and who experience life and emotions in ways the rest of us can't comprehend, and that has always been true and always will be.

Guns are readily available -- too available. So are books on how to make bombs. Violence and insanity are here to stay. But the one thing we can do is to honor those who have died.

I still believe it should be the victims photos on the front pages of our newspapers, and that we should be paying tribute to them right now. I think there should be a small link to information about the killer, and to what was contained in his manifesto. I haven't turned the TV on in days because I just don't want to see and hear endless analyses of this guy, even if his words and images are "professionally" presented.

What this says about us as a society is that we find the villian more interesting, more worthy of attention. Its' not about whether that's what he wanted, it's about whether we want to say that about ourselves. There are heroes in this story, people who died to save the lives of others, and we're hearing almost nothing about them. One was a holocaust survivor who stood in front of the door and was killed when trying to save his students. I can't recall his name because I've only seen it printed once. I'd be very interested to read more about his brilliant life, than to read about Cho's tortured psyche and violent, intrusive thoughts.

SonofCarl's notion of calling him Librescu's murderer is something to think about.

My understanding is that John Lennon fans do not say the name of his killer, so as not to give him any of the publicity he desired. It's a gesture, very small but pointed, of resistance.

I think it's normal to feel a sense of "what can we do to prevent this from happening again?" and try to exert some control over these incomprehensible, unforeseeable acts of violence. For some, that means learning all we can about the perpetrator, and demystifying him and exposing him as the mentally ill, inadequate personality type he was (so that nobody views him as "glamorous.") For others, it means not giving him any attention or air time, so that future perps won't get the idea that killing people is a quick and easy way to get "famous." The fact is, though, that Cho isn't around to enjoy his fame, so it's kind of pointless to say that we're "giving him what he wants."

We can't control the thought processes of the mentally ill, and there will be future events as bad or worse as this one, more people will die, someone may even cite Cho as their inspriration. There are sick people who have a thought process that doesn't respond to reason, there are people with empathy disorders and who experience life and emotions in ways the rest of us can't comprehend, and that has always been true and always will be.

Guns are readily available -- too available. So are books on how to make bombs. Violence and insanity are here to stay. But the one thing we can do is to honor those who have died.

I still believe it should be the victims photos on the front pages of our newspapers, and that we should be paying tribute to them right now. I think there should be a small link to information about the killer, and to what was contained in his manifesto. I haven't turned the TV on in days because I just don't want to see and hear endless analyses of this guy, even if his words and images are "professionally" presented.

What this says about us as a society is that we find the villian more interesting, more worthy of attention. Its' not about whether that's what he wanted, it's about whether we want to say that about ourselves. There are heroes in this story, people who died to save the lives of others, and we're hearing almost nothing about them. One was a holocaust survivor who stood in front of the door and was killed when trying to save his students. I can't recall his name because I've only seen it printed once. I'd be very interested to read more about his brilliant lif