Is NBC News being tabloidy or being responsible?

There has been a lot of criticism aimed at NBC News for airing the video sent to them by Cho-seeung Hui, the student who killed 31 people at Virginia Tech, before committing suicide.

Some of it came from more predictable sources, such as Accuracy In Media, whilst others have been less expected. Media Bistro's TV Newser reported some of the other sources.

Whilst I have some sympathy for the view that we shouldn't be giving publicity to these people, I also believe that we as a society need to understand what motivates these people to do what they do.

I can also understand the criticism that this kind of coverage is tabloidy and irresponsible. However, I would answer this by asking a question. What is responsible journalism?

Is it responsible to only cover stories and angles that we as a society, country or group of individuals feel safe in covering, or should we actively be covering stories and angles that do make us feel uncomfortable?

I would argue that it is essential that we do cover angles to these stories that do take us out of ouor comfort zones, and make us face up to things that we dislike. In fact, to actively avoid these angles because of this, would in my view be very irresponsible. You would have to handle these angles with tact and discretion and avoid sensationalising it. But you should cover them.

Was NBC right to air the video? Ultimately yes, but did they handle it right? Well, I'm not sure. Perhaps they could have handled it better, but they could have handled it a lot worse as well.

Editorialising The News.

I would call myself something of a news junkie. I like to tune in to various news sources to get different perspectives on the news. This is a way of really getting a purer, more factual perspective on the news.

But it is also a way of learning which news sources you can trust, and which ones try to influence your opinions. The Sun, like most if not all newspapers, tries to influence your thoughts. Take the story of the shootings at Virginia Tech University. When the student Cho Seung-hui sent his video package to NBC News in New York between the shootings, The Sun reported it this way...

"...MASSACRE madman Cho Seung-Hui sent a chilling message to TV chiefs after slaying his first two victims."

Now, let me highlight in red, the words that are not necessary to tell the story.

"...MASSACRE madman Cho Seung-Hui sent a chilling message to TV chiefs after slaying his first two victims."

Now, if you read ONLY the light coloured words, the story still makes sense, but is nowhere near as dramatic, and is not nearly as full of hyperbole. The full version reads like an old fashioned newspaper hack's writing style. Now contrast this to the BBC's reporting of the same story.

"...The student who shot dead at least 30 people at Virginia Tech sent a package to the US TV network NBC News on the day of the shootings, police said."

Now, on that, there is one piece that stands out to me as being wrong and that is having the words "...police said..." at the end of the sentence, rather than at the beginning. It reads better the other way, but apart from that, there is almost nothing there in that sentence that doesn't need to be there to tell the story.

So, why do newspaper articles add all these extra words? Mainly it's to reinforce an editorial standpoint on the story. They really want you to think a certain way, they want to create a certain political atmosphere.

Another good example of this was the way the printed media created a political atmosphere, was when the sailors and marines who had been captured by Iran came home, they were allowed to sell their stories by the Ministry of Defence.

Those newspapers who didn't manage to get a story from the former captives, criticised the papers that did. Now this in itself was not unusual, this happens every time. But there was a greater backlash, because other elements of the media, including broadcasters and bloggers, got in on the act as well. The next day, the newspapers that had taken stories from the marines, got in on the same act as the others!

Yet none of them considered that Iran had started this with the videos they had put out showing the sailors and marines 'confessing their guilt'. The Ministry of Defence was always going to allow the sailors and marines to tell their story and always looked like it would, just this once, allow the stories to be sold to newspapers, in order to counter the propoganda being put out by Iran.

I seem to be the only person who thought that this was not a great idea, but had to be done. Everybody else I spoke to, took the critical line that the media portrayed.

In the past few years, a lot of the mainstream media, and a number of bloggers, have criticised Arabic 24 hour news channel Al-Jazeera, for showing the videos that some suicide bombers have sent to them. Newshounds, the anti-Fox News website, made a great point recently about how much the mainstream media in the US had criticised Al-Jazeera for doing what NBC had done on their "NBC Nightly News" programme on Wednesday 18th April 2007.

The media can be that hypocritical sometimes. As bloggers, some of us too have been hypocritical, especially those who promote a political viewpoint. I like to keep my views consistent, and when my views change, I will need to be able to communicate to you, the reader, why my views have changed. I will aim to report, as much as I editorialise, and I hope that I can make a clear link between the facts, and my editorial opinion.