Blame the killer ~ Michael Coren, Toronto Sun, Saturday, April 21, 2007
Posted on 04/23/2007 11:19:44 AM PDT by GMMAC
NBC Proud Part of the Culture of Death
HumanEvents.com
by Charles Adler (more by this author)
Posted 04/23/2007 ET
It was late Wednesday afternoon, April eighteenth, when a Virginia police officer told the world that NBC had received a so-called manifesto from the Virginia Tech gunman. We were told that the tape and the ramblings would help in the investigation. Within minutes of the news conference, some of the sick pictures that the gunman took of himself were released on an NBC Web site. Pretty soon, all the media had the images. Many newspapers decided to publish them on their front pages.
I cannot for the life of me understand what benefit this served, either to the police investigation, or to the public. It seems to me that broadcasting this material did little more than to secure NBC’s position as an active participant in the culture of death. The killer didn’t have to put a gun to NBC’s head to force them to broadcast his handiwork. The only gun to the temple was the desire to get high ratings. NBC allowed itself to share the moral low ground with the killer. He wanted to put more points on the board than the Columbine creeps and NBC wanted to score higher ratings than it’s competitors. NBC cared not a lick that these visuals provided plankton for the sharks of the universe always on the hunt for fresh kill.
It was sadly ironic to me that this was the same network that wrapped itself in the garments of moral righteousness when it came to the recent firing of Don Imus after he disparaged the Rutgers University women's basketball team. This same network was now congratulating itself for being on the receiving end of sick messages from a mass murderer, and displaying his glamour shots on its Website and its evening broadcast. In doing so they tried to wash their hands of any social responsibility by wringing their hands and claiming that this was an agonizing decison for them. Professional spinners know that if you make a self interested decision that will be seen as controversial, always make sure the public is told that the decision was a difficult one and ultimately one which made in the public interest. Brian Williams, the earnest face of NBC toed the company line by telling them on his evening broadcast and on other shows which he appeared that the network acted responsibly because they didn't put everything the killer sent them on the airwaves. I suppose we should be grateful to NBC for not releasing every single rat in Cho's sewer. While the airwaves never were and clearly never will be a vermine free zone, we are instructed by Brian Williams to give thanks to the NBC suits for maintaining a certain level of decorum.
Do any of the legions of serious consumers buy the NBC spin? Criminal profilers and Mental health professionals who don't have contracts with NBC aren't buying it. What about the parents and grandparents of the students whose lives were extinguished They are now able to see the very last thing their kids saw before their lives were stolen. NBC has now helped to define these young lives by the only visual that will never be forgotten, that of Cho wearing his butcher garb?
Emptying rounds of tape on the public is not journalism. It is turning the public airwaves into a cesspool. If Imus offended university students by turning his poorly aimed comedic guns on them, can you imagine how much offence NBC delivered by enabling the real guns of a mad man to live on in the infamy of cyberspace and mass media.
I don't know if other media networks would have handled this differently if they'd received the tapes. But I do remember that last week, when NBC was pretending they were the moral arbiters of taste, saying to myself it's getting a little thick in here, and one of these days these suits will really be up to their eyeballs in sewage. That's now happened. The suits had a choice -- to air or not to air the eye pollution created by the Virginia Tech mass murderer. NBC made the wrong call, and all their rationalizations about the public interest being served and the criminal investigation being enhanced are nonsense.
Don Imus, the radio deejay made a joke that went over like a lead balloon and was fired. His bosses took something deadly serious and turned it into a very bad joke. Whose joke has done more damage? Whose joke was more offensive to university students? Can anyone make the case that what NBC did in releasing homicide porn will some day save lives? Can any suit at NBC gives us confidence that no twisted indvidual anywhere in the country or any other country will be motivated to hero worship Cho because of the incredible platform that NBC gave him? When networks suits poison the well by putting ratings above responsibility, we all pay a price. At the moment the only question is, "How high will the price be?" Brian Williams assured us that he has some extra feeling for the story because his daughter attends college. We have a right to wonder whether his daughter feels any safer today because of NBC's generous contribution to the culture of death.
Mr. Adler is the host of "Adler on Line," a national talk radio show on Canada's Corus Radio Network.
You can contact him through his website at www.charlesadler.com or email him at adleronline@gmail.com.
This is the courageous network that fired Imus for his racially insensitive comments.
Typical - the same media that showed the manifesto of Cho, refuses to show NFL fights on the football field.
1) NBC didn't know if Cho had sent similar packages to CBS, ABC, CNN, Fox, etc, and they knew they hadn't much time to convince themselves that publishing this **** was for the public good.
2) Pulitzer. I have no doubt that name was in the minds of many an editor in that boardroom.
I think the manifesto & the tapes & pictures SHOULD have been aired, just not at that particular time. It was like a one-two punch to the victims. After having suffered a devastating blow, they were subjected to yet another. What NBC should have done was announce that they had received materials from the killer, but that they would not be shown until a later date, out of respect for the victims - perhaps a week or two later, or even a month, thereby giving the victims and the nation time to heal. There should have been no RUSH to air them when they did.
For having the “courage” to publish it.
My thought: the news media should be mandated to be non-profit only, or else they cannot call themselves “news”. Clearly the profit motive devours any pretense of objectivity or informativeness.
At least folks like Rush did not glorify the killer by playing the audio. The MSM will do anything for both power and $$$$.
There was a reason Cho sent it to NBC. MSNBC/NBC are nothing but hate speech and lies; just watch sissy chrissy and his false reporter david schuster; just listen to the olberidiot spew his hatred daily; fat dim russert filed a false affidavit in the scooter libby case; nbc legal counsel told judge walton that when andrea mitchell said “every body knew” about our gal-pal-val she was making it up and when she told don imus she must have been drunk when she said it she was telling the truth. This is NBC....news? Nope.
(As you can tell, he isn’t quite out of my thoughts yet!) I’m not sure they’ll be able to glean anything useful from the rantings of this mad child, but my thoughts are with those that will have to go through all of his crap over and over and over again.
Publishing the manifesto has created the next mass murderer who knows full well that he can get his manifesto published if he just kill a lot of people.
The media know that, and actively welcome it.
The media will be VERY happy to rush out and cover the next mass murder that they have facilitated.
The failure of the U.S. Justice Dept. to prosecute the New York Slimes for seditiously exposing national secrets in time of war - aside from permitting reckless endangerment of both the Military & public to go unchecked and along with undermining societal confidence in the fair administration of justice & due respect for the rule of law - essentially gave the msm carte blanche when it comes to virtually any further outrageous disclosures.
Non-profit status denotes socialism? Churches and charities are socialist in nature? I think the designation demonstrates that these organizations have an important role to play in society (as the press surely does), and deserves to be free of the burden of taxation. It’s not like churches and charities don’t have paid employees... they just cannot make a profit while they fulfill their important role. My idea may have holes, but it would certainly go a long way towards the Press becoming a reliable information source rather than an emotional-manipulation propaganda machine.
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