MEdia and the Virginia Tech Tragedy
The media can be utterly disgusting. I’m sorry, the media IS utterly disgusting. This is the livejournal of a student from Virginia Tech. If you go down to the very first comment, it’s from a journalist asking for the student to call him to be live on the air. There are plenty of more comments below too.
I’m not a journalist so I’d refer you to the Slate’s complete coverage about the media’s handling of yesterday’s tragedy:
Did the press go to far? | How students tracked the tragedy online.
There is so much more information that keeps surfacing about yesterday’s tragedy. I realize the irony in criticizing the media and then posting all of these links but there is a grotesque difference between information gathering after the fact and exploiting a tragedy live on the air in real time.
Text of Warning E-Mails Sent on Campus
Holocaust survivor died saving students
NYT - Gunman Showed Hints of Anger and Isolation
Think Progress - More blaming the victim : Conservative Nathaniel Blake at Human Events Online links positively to John Derbyshire’s post, then writes that the students at Virginia Tech should feel “heartily ashamed” for not acting more bravely.
If you’re interested in a peak inside the mind of a mass murderer, there are two of Cho Seung-Hui’s Plays online.