Monday, April 16, 2007

"This Is A Columbine-Type Situation. It's Actually Much, Much Worse Than That."

Live Blogging The Virginia Tech Shootings and Other Media Hustles
Interesting, and given the unfolding nature of the story, the best approach by the message board is a litle more disturbing. Instead of a way for people to vent their grief, it's degenerated into an overheated discussion on guns and the Second Amendment.
Meanwhile, CNN has been showing dramatic video taken by a student, though anchors Betty Nguyen and Don Lemon feel the need to pat the network on the back. They told viewers twice within the space of 15 minutes that the video -- taken on a cellphone camera -- has been viewed more than 120,000 times on CNN.com.
MSNBC later had that student -- sans video -- on live for some Q&A, though the better interview was nailed by Allison Stewart, who interviewed student Derek O'Dell, who was shot in the arm by the gunman who invaded his classroom.
It intially looked like Fox News was trying to make a bad situation worse, by reporting that at least 32 were dead, while MSNBC and The New York Timews had 22 killed as of 2:15 p.m. ET, with the AP and CNN holding at 21. But the Washington Post also went with the higher number, which now appears to be the right total, though many media will view it as 31 who were killed plus a dead gunman.
The actual number doesn't detract from the scope of the tragedy, of course. But the rush to be first shouldn't preclude the need to be accurate.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Did not check out the forum messages~have read enough blame being placed on "America's Gun Culture" for the incident. If stuff like this happened everyday it would not be news. I think the media uses those words "the worst" too much. It is true that news reporters are more interested in getting the scope than waiting upon facts when reporting events.