The gruesome images are gone now from YouTube and a good case can be made that the posting of video from a recent fatal car crash should never have occurred. However, that doesn't alter the significant challenge to the mainstream media demonstrated by the event.
The problem for large media is this - the video was taken by someone with a cell phone long before police, firemen or media could arrive on the scene. In this case, the video was uploaded a while later, but I imagine with today's cell phone capabilities, it could have been up on the Internet in minutes. It was taken by students on a school bus, many of whom actually knew the students killed in the crash.
How long before people start building open networks capable of receiving such news almost instantly and broadcasting it to the world? Certainly big media is aware of this, witness how a growing number of existing media outlets are encouraging readers and viewers to send in the news.
The problem for big media is that the cost for entry into that market is low and the business potential is high. We'll be seeing more and more of this in the future and, unfortunately, some individuals are going to like their news very raw. In this case, and I haven't sought out the video, reports indicate it pictured the immediate aftermath with the bodies fully exposed and lying in the road.
But the day after two Wallkill High School students died in a head-on collision, someone who filmed the immediate aftermath took it one step further.
They posted that video to the world on the site www.youtube.com.
"You should seriously be ashamed of yourself," someone wrote on the site.
"Delete it and show respect," wrote freakazoid91. Almost every other word to the video's poster, named skedneck, is a profanity or a threat.
Whoever skedneck is, he or she knew what this was. Its title: "crash 2.2.07. the crash on 300 where andrew davis and john lopez died."
Youtube.com pulled the video down by 3 p.m. yesterday, citing a "terms of use violation." It was back up 30 minutes later, then down again.
Faces of Death, rotten.com, and ogrish.com have been around for how many years now? Grisly home videos are nothing new and I doubt the MSM is scared by them.
Posted by: scarshapedstar | Tuesday, February 06, 2007 at 11:27 AM
How tall are you scar - everything goes over your head? Try uploading an old camcorder ... oh, forget it, what's the point. Carry on.
Posted by: Dan Riehl | Tuesday, February 06, 2007 at 11:30 AM
Oh my, Dan tried to make a funny, he failed miserably but he did try.
Posted by: Rob Kaufman | Tuesday, February 06, 2007 at 11:39 AM
Now, i'm not one for censorship. Censorship beings small and grows to the size of a monster in which cannot be fed. However, these trends of capturing the most gruesome, vile, and gory videos/pictures that one can find is a bit disconcerting.
Not only does it show the current level of depravity of man, but it's showing that people are becoming more and more desensitized to horrific things. It's a troubling thought to think that children and teenagers are no longer cringing or troubled by the images of horror that are posting along the information highway. Like I said...im not one for censorship, but the levels of decadence in which people are falling too are starting to become evident in the mainstream.
A terrifying concept: When people have become so numb to terror that nothing scares us anymore.
Posted by: Kite | Tuesday, February 06, 2007 at 12:17 PM
Look Dan, there is hope for us yet! (don't tags work?)
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/012307.php
Posted by: Republican mandate | Tuesday, February 06, 2007 at 12:19 PM
Good comment, Kite.
But the first thought that came to my mind was the parents of these boys ever seeing that.
Oh man... I feel like crying just thinking about it. Shew. That is too sad.
Posted by: Phoenix | Tuesday, February 06, 2007 at 01:17 PM
"A terrifying concept: When people have become so numb to terror that nothing scares us anymore."
I think we're a long, long, long way off from that.
And the way I see it, posting a car crash doesn't "dehumanize" the incident, but covering it up does. The numbing sets in when people don't get to see the consequences of their actions. Video game violence lets you respawn. America's Funniest Home videos lets you see a guy who got kicked in the nuts win a million dollars. The Iraq War lets you hear patriotic speaches, but never lets you see the flag drapped coffins. So people get the impression that gunning down policemen, kicking people in the nuts, and invading 3rd World countries can't be nearly as bad as they sound. After all, our TVs tell us otherwise.
YouTube gives us the unique opportunity to see the footage raw and unedited. It's a fresh dose of reality, a reality that's perpetually obscured on the MSM because the censors think we just can't handle it. People want the truth, even if its a trivial truth like what really happened in that auto accident. I don't see anything wrong in giving it to them.
Posted by: Zifnab | Tuesday, February 06, 2007 at 03:23 PM
"People want the truth, even if its a trivial truth like what really happened in that auto accident. I don't see anything wrong in giving it to them."
So, based on this, it would be a mere trivial truth if your two sons were splattered all over a highway and it was filmed and put out for the world to see over and over and over again... And that your wife could see her two boys lying dead in a road. And the boys' brothers and sisters could revisit the trivial visual any time they felt like having their heads explode. And you could pat yourself on the back at the sight of the human detritus of your family splayed out for the world to see because we need more truth.
Makes sense.
Posted by: Phoenix | Tuesday, February 06, 2007 at 08:15 PM