VA Tech: Is Media Making It Worse?

Whenever there's a tragic event as there was today at Virginia Tech, we soon start hearing stories of counseling programs and how students are in danger of long term emotional issues as a result. Reading multiple threads on this Hokie bulletin board, I came away wondering if the press doesn't make it worse. The students commenting aren't saying too much good about the press. Along with the incident, it's as if they now see their institution being attacked. Perhaps they just aren't up for that right now.

I am appalled by the reporters and their tone of questions (especially the reporter from Radford) at the news conference. Give the speakers a break! NO ONE, I repeat, NO ONE can anticipate something like this happening, as it is unfathomable that one human being would do this to others. My heart and prayers go out to the parents, friends and families and I pray that the reporters show some compassion and common sense and grant the families the peace to deal with the difficult days ahead without having a camera and mike shoved in their faces. God rest the victims souls and grant their families peace. May God also have mercy on the gunman's soul.

I'm proud of the way they handled that Press Conference

They did as well as they could, press is a bunch of wolves looking for blood ** 

They gave it there(sic) best.The press sucks

You can scroll for other threads, Katie Couric especially is drawing criticism, along with Fox. Complaints about the media almost dominate the board.

These reporters should be put in lock down! 

The press needs to remember that this is the worst campus shooting in US history

Seriously, how do you prepare for the worst shooting in US history.

Exactly, the press is WAY out of line. 

Comments

[ConserView]

The vultures from the network newscasts are already circling as we speak.

[Hard Right]

All I know is that the majority of the media I've come in contact with were scum.

[Aussie]

"...I'm sorry to hear about what has happened today.

I am a news reporter at The Guardian newspaper in London and we are hoping to get in touch with students who could give us a little more detail about what went on.
We are also looking for blogs about what happened that we could post on our website.

If you felt comfortable discussing this all further, please do get in touch. My email is lee.glendinning@guardian.co.uk

Best wishes,
Lee
(Reply to this) (Thread)

Re: Virginia Tech
(Anonymous)
2007-04-16 11:16 pm UTC (link)
Get lost you prick. leave the poor kids alone. your news rag sucks anyways. "

http://icantread01.livejournal.com/103060.html

[Richard]

Ok, so the main gist of this whole tragedy, at least from the media’s perspective, is that Virginia Tech isn’t run as a police state. There were no armed guards in every room, no pat downs or metal detectors, and the administration didn’t foresee a second shooting after beginning to investigate the first. What is the lesson to be learned? Every university campus, no matter the size, is to be transformed into a police state. There will be a military presence, armed and visible, ID tags implanted in every student, faculty and staff, video surveillance of every building, room, nook and cranny. From now on, universities will employee covert agents to infiltrate the student and faculty populations, find potential dangerous elements and weed them out. This strategy will eventually trickle down to the K-12 school system. Then, and only then, will all the children be safe.
R.J.

[Buzzy]

Reporters at news conferences always end up acting like slightly retarded spoiled children. It reminds of an an old SNL skit from the Gulf War I era where reporters keep asking the military spokesmen questions like "is there anything you can tell us that will undermine our soldiers moral and give aid and support to the enemy".

As for the University's reaction today I can just say that if everyone acted with 100% caution to everything that happens we would cease to function as a nation. Should entire communities be placed on "lock down" because of any shooting? They happen everyday somewhere and the percentage that escalate to a mass killing are so tiny that no agency takes the possibility into consideration.

I'm waiting for particulars on this case as are countless others. The two hour interval between the first shooting the multiple shootings on campus strikes be as very odd.

[Phoenix]

If I could have used magic vanish-ray vision tonight, I would have nuked Hannity off the planet into space where he belongs. He tried SO hard to make this into a failure of the authorities. God, I was practically screaming at my TV until Mark Furman took him down. Then Greta got some cop-hating dufus on and that's when I turned it off. It's bad enough to feel so bad you can't stand it and then to have the media piss you off so bad you can't stand it......

[tally]

yes, the media coverage sucks. i actually turned the tv to some reality dating crap. i would have liked to have seen some decent coverage. i hope those poor students ignore the media whores, i am.

[Northerner]

"NO ONE, I repeat, NO ONE can anticipate something like this happening, as it is unfathomable that one human being would do this to others"

Oh really?

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0777958.html

[Phoenix]

Well, pat yourself on the back, Northerner. I know you are gleeful as hell. Wow, score one for you.

[Phoenix]

What kind of mind delights in bashing grief-stricken people at a time like this? You are a piece of work because for sure you did not evolve with your intellectual powers intact.

[Northerner]

If that was meant for me, Phoenix, I am not bashing the victims. I am bashing the idiots who, after every similar massacre, keep saying "But we could never have foreseen this, this has never happened before". Yes it has, and unless someone does something drastic about access to deadly weapons, it will keep happening.

[imaginewhirledpeas]

Northerner: You are still an idiot..........Thw WORST mass murder to occur in the US was by a guy using a can of gasolene, 87 people...over a woman who didnt ant him. Want to ban gas and matches too dumbass?

[Robert Crawford]

"Reporters at news conferences always end up acting like slightly retarded spoiled children."

Acting?

[David M]

Trackbacked by The Thunder Run - Web Reconnaissance for 04/17/2007
A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention.

[Rory Flood]

Sorry Northerner. Even in Canada with some of the strictest gun controls in North America, bad people do horrible things with and without guns. Ted Bundy(US-Killed 30 women), Clifford Olsen(CAN-Killed 2kids/9adults), Michael McGray(CAN-Killed up to 16) and Robert Pickton(CAN-Killed 26 women) all without the use of a gun. Does it matter that it didn't happen at the same time, NO! Because if your dead, your dead.

[tomax7]

...rumour is the assailant was an Asian male, in one sense I'm glad he wasn't an Islamic on a jihad, otherwise we'd see the MSM tripping over themselves conjuring up new word phrases to NOT describe his religious or ethnic background.

[Rory Flood]

One more thought Northerner. Drunk driving accounted for 2200 deaths of 15-20 years olds in the year 1998. In 2002, the Los Angeles Times examined accident data and estimated that in the previous year, of the 18,000 "alcohol-related" traffic fatalities drunk driving activists cited the year before, only about 5,000 involved a drunk driver taking the life of a sober driver, pedestrian, or passenger.
So Northerner, is it time to get rid of alcohol due to the number of deaths it is responsible for.

[Phoenix]

Northerner,

Two things for you:

Read Sir Thomas More's "Utopia". You get all excited reading it until the end when he states unequivocably that it could never, ever work.

Then pull out Pink Floyd's album, "The Wall", put headphones on and transport yourself to Room 101 where the Jackboot will inform you how to rid this world of violence. Good luck, and get back to us with your plan.

[Mister Snitch!]

Of course, it's usually difficult to prove that the press makes things worse. That's why they get away with the things they do. Once in a while they do get shown up for what they are. I remember back in the day when there would be a bombing or a shooting, and a person or group would issue a statement claiming responsibility for the act. The press would report that so-and-so "took credit" for whatever the destruction entailed. Itwas like a shout out to the homies - Yo! Oswald! Good shot! Thanks for helping ratings!

Eventually, enough people complained that the press stopped using the 'credit' line, but their feeling is still the same: It's all about ratings.

We don't need to carry the burden of proof as to whether the press makes the tragedies worse. The press needs to prove that they make these things BETTER.

[bloodrage bob]

i see where northerner has popped up again from under her rock, and is making noise about them eeeeevil guns she clearly fears sooooo much.

a quick question, northy: is not the most prolific serial killer in the world that chappie from the USSR? you know: the one who, since the utopian USSR had such stringent gun-control laws, (wonder why that was? hmmmm?), had to kill all his 50? 60? 80? victims by means OTHER than a gun?

thank GOD for gun control, administered by the glorious state. thanks to that, you see, the guy's 70? 80? 90? victims had no chance to fight back or defend themselves.

but at least people like you had fewer episodes of your bed-wetting, comically childish fear of "guns" to worry about.

[bloodrage bob]

oh, c'mon, northy - you only took 13 minutes to defend yourself when phoenix pointed out what a wanker you truly are. all *I* did was to point out the fact that the world-record serial killer came from the extremely-highly-gun-controlled (why'd they do that again? did they not trust their own citizenry or something?) from the USSR. and no word from you since??

you're not just a wanker, northy: you're a *gutless* wanker.

[PredatorOmnivore]

the real questions are: Why did most of the students cower and hide under their desks waiting their turn to be slaughtered like sheep? Why did they expect the police to come rescue them? Why are the police being blamed for not showing up on time? It is a no brainer truism that the police cannot be everywhere all the time to protect someone. Why is there no media outrage expressed that the students failed to protect themselves? Whatever happened to the concepts of personal responsibility and self-defense? The gunman was only one gunman. Instead of quivering like sheep, the students should have rushed the lone gunman en masse. The best and first act of self-defense is escape. If trapped in a classroom and facing certain death waiting to be shot, why didn't the students swarm the gunman? Why did the students act like sheep waiting to be slaughtered? One would think that in this post 9/11 era with widespread media coverage of the self-defense actions of the passengers on flight 93 assuming your own self-defense would be the obvious course of action. Here is a link to a blog by a forensic psychologist pondering the sheep mindset: http://drhelen.blogspot.com/2006/10/lets-roll.html