death and murder happens, sadly on a regular basis....
should the next time someone dies, should the news not cover it out of "respect for the families"...? should they only cover feel-good things...
no one seems to be upset at the Smoking Gun, who posted his play....why is that different...?
sadly, news is news...and people with watch and read...because at the end of the day...we are all voyeurs...
You know it's not a covering up, covering up would be to talk about these events in the fait-divers section without any details, we're far from that, we're to the far opposite, into the indecent voyeurism side. I believe there's a middle somewhere, but medias will do what serve them best and people want to see everything, just like in horror movies, they want to see the brain cramming out. I do choose not to watch, before you come out with this rhetoric, but it's almost impossible, you watch the news, it's there.
i've never heard about "the Smoking Gun", don't know what it is.
saying "news is news" is the fatalist approach, "it's like that and can't change", i disagree, news is news and it can inform us without falling into voyeurism or sensationalism, but i know it's currently like this, it doesn't mean it's ok to be like this, and that's why i think this is going too far.
"L'homme est né libre, et partout il est dans les fers"
-Jean-Jacques Rousseau
It's important to understand just how ill he was.... there are different degrees.
there's a difference between stabbing someone once and stabbing someone 147 times.
was he just a little wacky and then one-day snapped or was he a full-blown nut job? There is a huge area in-between and the video shows just how disturbed he was.
no there is not.... have you ever stabbed someone once???
can we all agree to this...unless you are a soldier...you gotta be nuts to kill someone...no matter how many times you shoot or stab or hit..or what the fuck ever.
I haven't read all 9 pages here, but I have to agree with the initial post. What NBC did is exactly what the killer wanted -- attention. Not to mention glorifying the tragedy. I'm sorry, this just proves that media in general has reached a (not so) new low.
You know it's not a covering up, covering up would be to talk about these events in the fait-divers section without any details, we're far from that, we're to the far opposite, into the indecent voyeurism side. I believe there's a middle somewhere, but medias will do what serve them best and people want to see everything, just like in horror movies, they want to see the brain cramming out. I do choose not to watch, before you come out with this rhetoric, but it's almost impossible, you watch the news, it's there.
i've never heard about "the Smoking Gun", don't know what it is.
saying "news is news" is the fatalist approach, "it's like that and can't change", i disagree, news is news and it can inform us without falling into voyeurism or sensationalism, but i know it's currently like this, it doesn't mean it's ok to be like this, and that's why i think this is going too far.
It's important to understand just how ill he was.... there are different degrees.
there's a difference between stabbing someone once and stabbing someone 147 times.
was he just a little wacky and then one-day snapped or was he a full-blown nut job? There is a huge area in-between and the video shows just how disturbed he was.
so does that bring any relief to the families ?? would it to you ??......
You know when you are watching sports and suddenly the camera pans the stands or zooms in on a coach's face and the announcer says "there is a fan out on the field."
They stopped showing those fans because it was recognized that if a fan knows he's going to get shown for running onto the field, it is more likely that the fan will go. If the fan knows that they don't even put that shit on TV anymore, than perhaps it's not worth getting arrested just to do it in front of several thousand strangers.
Similarly, I suppose you certainly could argue that someone contemplating suicide could see this and say "fuck it" I'm going out in a blaze of glory and I'll get on TV for next few weeks."
I cannot come up with a new sig till I get this egg off my face.
you say "going too far"...where's the line..? I guess that's the question...
probably, and that's why we disagree, i think the line has been cross, you don't think the line has been cross.
We also disagree that the killer's intention was to get those tapes aired, i think it was exactly his intentions, and they did fall into that, probably thinking about ratings and profits more than about the morality of the affair. That's where i think the line has been cross.
In the end it change nothing to the event itself, it's just the way they're capitalizing on this event for their own profits, and yes any medias would do the same, that is the disgusting part.
"L'homme est né libre, et partout il est dans les fers"
-Jean-Jacques Rousseau
I think it would (for me). Time will tell what the real families have to say about it. you have kids... wouldn't you want to know more about this guy?
and it was on every news outlet, not just nbc.
i do have kids and no i would wan't the prick alive so i could kill his ass, and just because it was on every news outlet doesn't make it right and did you hear that a few of the families refused to talk to NBC after this debacle ......is that enough of an answer from the families ......
I strongly believe that there were ways that NBC could have reported the contents of the tape, and thereby satisfied those who want to "fill in the gaps" without resorting to actually showing it. As I stated in another post, it was slapped up there only 7 hours after receiving the package. If nothing else, it was shoddy, lazy, sleazy journalism.
The situation yesterday, just two days after the shootings, was too raw to have shown the video. It was a rush by NBC to capture as much ratings as they could, pure and simple. That's the shameful thing here.
You know when you are watching sports and suddenly the camera pans the stands or zooms in on a coach's face and the announcer says "there is a fan out on the field."
They stopped showing those fans because it was recognized that if a fan knows he's going to get shown for running onto the field, it is more likely that the fan will go. If the fan knows that they don't even put that shit on TV anymore, than perhaps it's not worth getting arrested just to do it in front of several thousand strangers.
Similarly, I suppose you certainly could argue that someone contemplating suicide could see this and say "fuck it" I'm going out in a blaze of glory and I'll get on TV for next few weeks."
I wonder if any other medias will now talk against those tapes being aired, this "debate" might be kept into your home, workplace and internet (blog, message board)...
"L'homme est né libre, et partout il est dans les fers"
-Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Don't make murderers famous
Editorial - Thursday, April 19, 2007 @ 08:00
Why is it that our society turns mass murderers into celebrities?
The Virginia Tech shooting massacre, the worst in U.S. history, occurred Monday. By Wednesday, the shooter's photo and name were plastered across front pages of newspapers and websites around the world.
What about his 32 victims? Will their names become household words, their photos instantly recognizeable for years to come? Not likely. Why is it that, so many years after the Montreal Massacre on Dec.
6, 1989, so many of us still remember the name of Marc Lepine, but so few of us know the name of a single one of his 14 victims?
There is a demented subculture in our society, perpetuated on the Internet, that venerates the perpetrators of these mass killings. The Columbine killers in 1999 fed on this subculture. So did the perpetrator of the Dawson College shooting in Montreal last September. No doubt, so did the murderer in Virginia on Monday.
Mass killers who then commit suicide often seek a sick kind of celebrity. Society should deny them that.
In the age of instant media and the Internet, withholding names and photos of such killers entirely is neither practical nor possible. There's a legitimate public interest in knowing who, or what, is capable of such a crime.
But we can be responsible in how we present this information - and we should be. The mass-media obsession with stories about every aspect of the Virginia shooter's life, illustrated with splashy photos, is unseemly and degrading.
The Virginia shooter was a pathetic and twisted loser who took out his rage on dozens of innocents and caused untold pain in hundreds of lives.
Did you honestly expect any different from the media these days?
I completely agree with your post, but I am not shocked that they jumped all over it.
It's news, isn't it? What are they supposed to do, not run it? News organizations have a responsibility to report, even if the report is painful, and NBC's news division simply did its job. They handed the tapes over to the police and, after the cops finished their investigation, they played snippets of the tape. I don't see a problem with NBC's actions.
"Almost all those politicians took money from Enron, and there they are holding hearings. That's like O.J. Simpson getting in the Rae Carruth jury pool." -- Charles Barkley
I fail to see how televising this kid's words has anything to do with disrespecting the families. I think you all live in a distorted perception of reality.
I necessarily have the passion for writing this, and you have the passion for condemning me; both of us are equally fools, equally the toys of destiny. Your nature is to do harm, mine is to love truth, and to make it public in spite of you. - Voltaire
Don't make murderers famous
Editorial - Thursday, April 19, 2007 @ 08:00
Why is it that our society turns mass murderers into celebrities?
The Virginia Tech shooting massacre, the worst in U.S. history, occurred Monday. By Wednesday, the shooter's photo and name were plastered across front pages of newspapers and websites around the world.
What about his 32 victims? Will their names become household words, their photos instantly recognizeable for years to come? Not likely. Why is it that, so many years after the Montreal Massacre on Dec.
6, 1989, so many of us still remember the name of Marc Lepine, but so few of us know the name of a single one of his 14 victims?
There is a demented subculture in our society, perpetuated on the Internet, that venerates the perpetrators of these mass killings. The Columbine killers in 1999 fed on this subculture. So did the perpetrator of the Dawson College shooting in Montreal last September. No doubt, so did the murderer in Virginia on Monday.
Mass killers who then commit suicide often seek a sick kind of celebrity. Society should deny them that.
In the age of instant media and the Internet, withholding names and photos of such killers entirely is neither practical nor possible. There's a legitimate public interest in knowing who, or what, is capable of such a crime.
But we can be responsible in how we present this information - and we should be. The mass-media obsession with stories about every aspect of the Virginia shooter's life, illustrated with splashy photos, is unseemly and degrading.
The Virginia shooter was a pathetic and twisted loser who took out his rage on dozens of innocents and caused untold pain in hundreds of lives.
I fail to see how televising this kid's words has anything to do with disrespecting the families. I think you all live in a distorted perception of reality.
there's much more than just disrespecting the families in all this... but only the family will say if they feel disrespected by this so that's probably why "you fail" to see how it is disrespectful, it's not to you or me to judge about this perception of reality. It seem like they felt disrespected, now what to say to them? Don't feel disrespected cause Anhimus said so?
"L'homme est né libre, et partout il est dans les fers"
-Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Ok, maybe not fame like Britney Spears fame, but sure he wanted his crime to be recognized as grand.
I like your positive approach about how a kid could seek help watching those tapes, but i unfortunatly don't share that view, i also don't think it can automaticly turn a kid into a killer, but what's the purpose of showing this? I don't think they had "public security" in mind, just rating, so that's why i think it's disgusting, to take this event and turn it into their advantage, the discussion is not over the killer's intention, but over the medias intentions...
the purpose of showing this is to give the public what they want. this is scary and horrifying and people do not understand why it happened. the public wants to know why he did it. so they released it to give them that information. it is reassuring to people to know he had mental issues, that he was not healthy. it allows them to see him as a fucked up kid who should have been in therapy, not college. it might push them to look a little closer the next time they think a kid is weird... to see if he's just weird or if he might need help. that is why they did it. because the public wanted to see it. if they didn't want to see it, they would not have wasted time showing it.
i do have kids and no i would wan't the prick alive so i could kill his ass,
that's exactly what my husband would say and I understand why.
and just because it was on every news outlet doesn't make it right
my point was - why boycott NBC if they all aired it?
and did you hear that a few of the families refused to talk to NBC after this debacle ......is that enough of an answer from the families ......
avoiding the media right now is understandable and it might not have anything to do with their feelings on the video. If my kid was shot down a few days ago, the last thing I'd be doing is watching television.
just as people here have different views, I'm sure the families have different views, too. As I said earlier, time will tell. I'm sure some of them will be on 20/20 someday.
on a side note-there is already talk of making it easier to have people committed against their will. There was a woman on the local news last night...a former professor at VT and she said that when she first heard of the shooting, she knew it was one of 2 people. When she heard the guy was asian, she knew exactly who it was.
I don't know how I feel about that. About being able to lock up every 'weird' kid for evaluation.
he didnt care how many saw it? why else would he send it to the largest television staion in the world, who also happens to have the hif=ghest rated news show?
of course he wanted everyone to see it
so that the cops didnt make it disappear and simply tell the public "the devil mad him." he wanted people to know why. and he got it. he thought he was making a statement about classicism. but what he did was show the world that we cannot turn a blind eye to mental illness. if this video didn't come out, he would be like ted bundy, just another evil monster that we learn nothing from.
1. you shouldnt make this a personal attack on me, how the fuck am i being a hypocrite?
2. you shouldnt spin this into your little pro-war stance, it is quite ridiculous and pathetic
3. if you cant see the difference between airing the ramblings of a lunatic as he brandishes the weapons used the day after he kills 33 people, and airing the horrors of war that we have caused, and continue to cause. then i dont know what to tell you, and quite frankly you are so far off base it isnt even worth debating any futher.
some people really do enjoy koolaid i guess?
3. there is a difference, but not a meaningful one. one shows the horrors of one, and one shows the horrors of untreated and ignored mental illness. you didnt bitch when they showed bin laden's videos... and he murdered a couple thousand people. why did we give him attention? oh yeah, that wasn bin laden, the government made those videos! :rolleyes:
way to go, you made a madmans wish come true. you did just what he wanted you to do. show his mad rantings all over the world before the blood has even been cleaned up. you should be ashamed of yourself NBC. dont you have any class? dont you have a heart? dont you have any compassion for the victims? or did you piss your pants in glee when you realized this wacko handed you the biggest news story at the moment?
i cant tell anyone what to do, but i personally refuse to watch this fucking psycho and his bullshit propaganda. dont feed his fire, dont do what he wanted, ignore the lunacy. do not feed into his circus. it is exactly what he wanted.
the purpose of showing this is to give the public what they want. this is scary and horrifying and people do not understand why it happened. the public wants to know why he did it. so they released it to give them that information. it is reassuring to people to know he had mental issues, that he was not healthy. it allows them to see him as a fucked up kid who should have been in therapy, not college. it might push them to look a little closer the next time they think a kid is weird... to see if he's just weird or if he might need help. that is why they did it. because the public wanted to see it. if they didn't want to see it, they would not have wasted time showing it.
It's obvious, and that's why he sent the tapes, cause he knew the public would want to see it (now that is a generalisation, but many want to see it), and he knew the station would show it, i predict it will happen again, just like they refuse to deal with hostage takers, cause they know if you negociate and give them what they want, it will happen again.
Now that they did what he wanted and made him famous, it means that if an individual have mental problems, and have this kind of killing spree planned, he can send his tapes to a major serious medias outlets and they will show the message to the world.
Of course it might change nothing for the killing to occur, that is impossible to predict, but it glorify, or publicize the killer himself to a disgusting level, it is voyeurism, of course that's a personal opinion that won't be shared by everyone cause most peoples do want to know, life is so boring anyway... no?
"L'homme est né libre, et partout il est dans les fers"
-Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Comments
You know it's not a covering up, covering up would be to talk about these events in the fait-divers section without any details, we're far from that, we're to the far opposite, into the indecent voyeurism side. I believe there's a middle somewhere, but medias will do what serve them best and people want to see everything, just like in horror movies, they want to see the brain cramming out. I do choose not to watch, before you come out with this rhetoric, but it's almost impossible, you watch the news, it's there.
i've never heard about "the Smoking Gun", don't know what it is.
saying "news is news" is the fatalist approach, "it's like that and can't change", i disagree, news is news and it can inform us without falling into voyeurism or sensationalism, but i know it's currently like this, it doesn't mean it's ok to be like this, and that's why i think this is going too far.
-Jean-Jacques Rousseau
no there is not.... have you ever stabbed someone once???
these people are crazy...mentally ill if you will
of course self deefense is ok to
http://forums.pearljam.com/showthread.php?t=241185
the smoking gun stuff I mentioned...
you say "going too far"...where's the line..? I guess that's the question...
I think it would (for me). Time will tell what the real families have to say about it. you have kids... wouldn't you want to know more about this guy?
and it was on every news outlet, not just nbc.
nope...i imagine my girl being a victim..and than i get extremely sad...and realize..i want her back right now...thats not gonna happen...
They stopped showing those fans because it was recognized that if a fan knows he's going to get shown for running onto the field, it is more likely that the fan will go. If the fan knows that they don't even put that shit on TV anymore, than perhaps it's not worth getting arrested just to do it in front of several thousand strangers.
Similarly, I suppose you certainly could argue that someone contemplating suicide could see this and say "fuck it" I'm going out in a blaze of glory and I'll get on TV for next few weeks."
quit it...!!!
quit making sense...
probably, and that's why we disagree, i think the line has been cross, you don't think the line has been cross.
We also disagree that the killer's intention was to get those tapes aired, i think it was exactly his intentions, and they did fall into that, probably thinking about ratings and profits more than about the morality of the affair. That's where i think the line has been cross.
In the end it change nothing to the event itself, it's just the way they're capitalizing on this event for their own profits, and yes any medias would do the same, that is the disgusting part.
-Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The situation yesterday, just two days after the shootings, was too raw to have shown the video. It was a rush by NBC to capture as much ratings as they could, pure and simple. That's the shameful thing here.
pretty good analogy
-Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Editorial - Thursday, April 19, 2007 @ 08:00
Why is it that our society turns mass murderers into celebrities?
The Virginia Tech shooting massacre, the worst in U.S. history, occurred Monday. By Wednesday, the shooter's photo and name were plastered across front pages of newspapers and websites around the world.
What about his 32 victims? Will their names become household words, their photos instantly recognizeable for years to come? Not likely. Why is it that, so many years after the Montreal Massacre on Dec.
6, 1989, so many of us still remember the name of Marc Lepine, but so few of us know the name of a single one of his 14 victims?
There is a demented subculture in our society, perpetuated on the Internet, that venerates the perpetrators of these mass killings. The Columbine killers in 1999 fed on this subculture. So did the perpetrator of the Dawson College shooting in Montreal last September. No doubt, so did the murderer in Virginia on Monday.
Mass killers who then commit suicide often seek a sick kind of celebrity. Society should deny them that.
In the age of instant media and the Internet, withholding names and photos of such killers entirely is neither practical nor possible. There's a legitimate public interest in knowing who, or what, is capable of such a crime.
But we can be responsible in how we present this information - and we should be. The mass-media obsession with stories about every aspect of the Virginia shooter's life, illustrated with splashy photos, is unseemly and degrading.
The Virginia shooter was a pathetic and twisted loser who took out his rage on dozens of innocents and caused untold pain in hundreds of lives.
He deserves to be forgotten, not famous.
http://www.owensoundsuntimes.com/webapp/sitepages/content.asp?contentid=492331&catname=Editorial&classif=
-Jean-Jacques Rousseau
It's news, isn't it? What are they supposed to do, not run it? News organizations have a responsibility to report, even if the report is painful, and NBC's news division simply did its job. They handed the tapes over to the police and, after the cops finished their investigation, they played snippets of the tape. I don't see a problem with NBC's actions.
there's much more than just disrespecting the families in all this... but only the family will say if they feel disrespected by this so that's probably why "you fail" to see how it is disrespectful, it's not to you or me to judge about this perception of reality. It seem like they felt disrespected, now what to say to them? Don't feel disrespected cause Anhimus said so?
-Jean-Jacques Rousseau
the purpose of showing this is to give the public what they want. this is scary and horrifying and people do not understand why it happened. the public wants to know why he did it. so they released it to give them that information. it is reassuring to people to know he had mental issues, that he was not healthy. it allows them to see him as a fucked up kid who should have been in therapy, not college. it might push them to look a little closer the next time they think a kid is weird... to see if he's just weird or if he might need help. that is why they did it. because the public wanted to see it. if they didn't want to see it, they would not have wasted time showing it.
that's exactly what my husband would say and I understand why.
my point was - why boycott NBC if they all aired it?
avoiding the media right now is understandable and it might not have anything to do with their feelings on the video. If my kid was shot down a few days ago, the last thing I'd be doing is watching television.
just as people here have different views, I'm sure the families have different views, too. As I said earlier, time will tell. I'm sure some of them will be on 20/20 someday.
on a side note-there is already talk of making it easier to have people committed against their will. There was a woman on the local news last night...a former professor at VT and she said that when she first heard of the shooting, she knew it was one of 2 people. When she heard the guy was asian, she knew exactly who it was.
I don't know how I feel about that. About being able to lock up every 'weird' kid for evaluation.
so that the cops didnt make it disappear and simply tell the public "the devil mad him." he wanted people to know why. and he got it. he thought he was making a statement about classicism. but what he did was show the world that we cannot turn a blind eye to mental illness. if this video didn't come out, he would be like ted bundy, just another evil monster that we learn nothing from.
3. there is a difference, but not a meaningful one. one shows the horrors of one, and one shows the horrors of untreated and ignored mental illness. you didnt bitch when they showed bin laden's videos... and he murdered a couple thousand people. why did we give him attention? oh yeah, that wasn bin laden, the government made those videos! :rolleyes:
you dont see a difference between someone who stabs someone once and someone who stabs someone 147 times?
he shouldn't be forgetten, he should be studied. Isn't it important to figure out what went wrong so it doesn't happen again?
I agree that he was pathetic and twisted but something made him that way.
You're off your rocker.
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It's obvious, and that's why he sent the tapes, cause he knew the public would want to see it (now that is a generalisation, but many want to see it), and he knew the station would show it, i predict it will happen again, just like they refuse to deal with hostage takers, cause they know if you negociate and give them what they want, it will happen again.
Now that they did what he wanted and made him famous, it means that if an individual have mental problems, and have this kind of killing spree planned, he can send his tapes to a major serious medias outlets and they will show the message to the world.
Of course it might change nothing for the killing to occur, that is impossible to predict, but it glorify, or publicize the killer himself to a disgusting level, it is voyeurism, of course that's a personal opinion that won't be shared by everyone cause most peoples do want to know, life is so boring anyway... no?
-Jean-Jacques Rousseau