By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 19, 2007; 8:44 AM
Did NBC do the right thing?
Was it a public service to air the words and hate-filled diatribe of Cho Seung Hui last night, after his final mailing showed up at the network, or was NBC giving a mass murderer what he wanted?
Was there any other journalistic decision beyond broadcasting at least some of Cho's video and written diatribe, or could the horrifying images, if not the words, been held back out of concern for the loved ones of those who died?
This was no easy decision. Not since the Unabomber demanded that the New York Times and Washington Post publish his endless manifesto has a news organization faced this kind of judgment. In this case, of course, the killer is dead by his own hand, so the only reason to publish his invective is to aid public understanding of the worst gun massacre in American history--or allow him, posthumously, to gloat.
First, this report, with an assist from Jerry Markon:
The unexpected package from Cho Seung Hui that arrived at NBC News yesterday morning contained both a worldwide scoop and a journalistic dilemma.
After turning over the original documents to federal authorities, NBC News President Steve Capus said last night, he faced a "tough call" in deciding how much to air, if any, of the Virginia Tech gunman's expletive-filled video and 1,800-word letter, along with photos of Cho and his guns and bullets.
"We tried to be sensitive to the families involved and to the investigation," Capus said in an interview. While it is "possible" that some relatives of the 32 students shot to death Monday may say that the network is giving the killer the platform he wanted, "they also may say, 'We want to know why. We need to know what was in his head, what drove him to do this.' This is a portrait of a killer."
Capus said Virginia State Police officials, in a conversation about noon, asked NBC to "hold off" on releasing the material until they had a chance to review the material. The state authorities gave NBC the green light about 4:30, saying it would not jeopardize the probe. The network aired portions of the video and note on "NBC Nightly News" at 6:30.
Anchor Brian Williams told viewers: "We are sensitive to how all of this will be seen by those affected, and we know we are, in effect, airing the words of a murderer here tonight. . . . So much of it is so profane, so downright gross and incomprehensible. We tried to edit carefully for broadcast tonight." The segment was posted on http://msnbc.com.
Former FBI agent Clint Van Zandt told Williams that the mailing was Cho's "ultimate victory. This is the way he's victimizing, further victimizing all of us, by reaching out from the grave and grabbing us and getting our attention and making us listen to his last rambling words and pictures."
Of course, no one forced NBC to broadcast those words and pictures. Capus said network journalists debated for hours what they should make public. "There are some things we haven't shown and words we haven't released that are more appropriate to hold back," he said. "Journalists have a responsibility. We're not just here to pass on in direct form raw video and complete documents."
The Washington Post and New York Times drew both praise and criticism in 1995 after publishing, at the request of federal authorities, a 35,000-word manifesto by the serial killer known as the Unabomber. In this case, with Cho dead by his own hand, critics were questioning last night whether NBC's decision to show the pictures and video might embolden other would-be murderers to seek such notoriety.
Nate Calhoun, a Blacksburg High School senior who lost a close friend in the massacre, came to the campus last night to pay respects to the victims. He blasted the network. "NBC really ticked my last nerves," he said. "The way this university is already struggling with pain, I object to them putting these pictures out like that. It's just not fair."
Kerry Redican, president of the Virginia Tech Faculty Senate, said he was not surprised by what he saw in the video. "This is a cold, calculating sociopath," he said. "He must have had a narcissistic core to him."
Redican said he approved of the NBC decision to air the material: "People are trying to make some sense of this. This showed the whole thing was really planned out."
Now back to blogging. I'm sure NBC is about be slammed from both sides. Here's an insta-reaction, just before the broadcast, from National Review's Stephen Spruiell:
"NBC News is about to give Cho an audience of around 10 million people for his deranged rantings. What kind of message does this send to other isolated, disturbed and angry youths who entertain the same violent thoughts as Cho?"
Journalistically, there is no way that NBC could have held back everything, not given the magnitude of the crime. But did we need to see a number of chilling images of Cho in various poses? Would a still photo and a few seconds of video have sufficed? Just as when we run terrorist videos, I have the sense that we are doing what an evildoer wanted, even if in this case the evildoer is dead.
What about the news that police had talked to Cho two years ago after stalking complaints from two separate women? And that he was evaluated by a mental-health facility after being deemed suicidal? Here's an ABC report:
"A court found that Virginia Tech killer Seung-Hui Cho was 'mentally ill' and potentially dangerous. Then it let him go.
"In December 2005 -- more than a year before Monday's mass shootings -- a district court in Montgomery County, Va., ruled that Cho presented 'an imminent danger to self or others.' That was the necessary criterion for a detention order, so that Cho, who had been accused of stalking by two female schoolmates, could be evaluated by a state doctor and ordered to undergo outpatient care."
Could anyone have been reasonably expected to take action against Cho? He had, after all, broken no laws--even in the purchase of those two guns--and made no threats against anyone.
Here's a report from the Insta-Wife, Dr. Helen: "Cho was ruled mentally ill by the courts and released. This is quite typical, given the degree of deinstitutionalization in our country, it is a wonder we don't have more violent people . . . The level of stupidity and incompetence in the area of mental health is staggering."
There is one law I'd like to see changed. A school official said that under federal privacy laws, he could not discuss what was in Cho's student records, even though he is dead. I respect the need for privacy, but under the circumstances, that seems ludicrous. What if we amended the law to say that authorities can make the records public if the deceased student has killed a number of his fellow students? I mean, who are we protecting at this point?
Andrew Sullivan has a flashback in reviewing the Cho case:
"The teacher flagged two students; one of them happened to turn out to be a mass murderer. But how many other college students have written things so creepy their teachers were worried about their sanity? Say it's two per sizeable college in the United States; that's thousands of students who wrote really disturbing stuff, and didn't shoot anyone. I recall my college creative writing classes, in which my most notable short story prompted several students and a very well-meaning teacher to approach me with offers of sympathy and help for my tortured issues about class, my father, and the Catholic Church. I was almost unable to bring myself to tell all those lovely, helpful people, that I had no such issues; in the grand traditions of fiction writers everywhere, I had made it all up."
I noted in yesterday's column that one columnist had reported that investigators tracking the gunman were focusing on a 25-year-old Chinese man who came here on a visa last year. The Atlantic's James Fallows reports from China how that false story reverberated:
"The alarm in the world's most populous nation was caused by one person, the (female) columnist Michael Sneed of the Chicago Sun Times. The crucial story she apparently wrote soon after the shooting now seems to have been sand-blasted out of the Sun Times archives, with no notice that it was ever there. . . .
"It was striking through the day that no 'real' news source stepped up to confirm Sneed's report. (The ones who passed it along were Drudge and Fox.) But eventually the Chinese started to assume that it must be true. Otherwise, how could an American journalist dare go public, fast and alone, with a detailed claim sure to cause international ripples? . . .
"Will Sneed spend much time apologizing? My guess is no."
Back to the blame game. The debate is really raging now, as this National Review editorial makes clear:
"All sides in this debate should always keep in mind that Cho Seung-Hui is the only one responsible for the massacre. He was bent on visiting death and pain on as many innocents as possible, in a hateful fit of destruction. He took dozens of promising lives, and then his own. These were acts of pure malice, a reminder -- if we needed one -- that evil is afoot in this, our broken world. After other such shootings, gun-control advocates have argued that more restrictions on guns can prevent these bloodbaths. After Columbine in 1999, even John McCain talked of tighter regulation on gun shows and assault weapons.
"Now, not even the Democratic presidential candidates are rushing en masse to endorse new gun-control measures. That is a sign the gun-control debate has shifted in a conservative direction. Evidently, Democrats have finally gotten tired of sustaining electoral damage by antagonizing gun owners . . .
"If anything, perhaps Virginia's gun rules should be even looser, and permit licensed persons to carry concealed guns on campus."
Dick Polman explains why gun control is going nowhere:
"So here we go again; we all know the drill by now. Politicians of all stripes will offer their 'thoughts' and 'prayers' to the victims' families. Special-interest groups on the left will cite the latest bloodbath as proof that we need gun control. Special-interest groups on the right will cite the latest bloodbath as proof that we need more gun ownership. Religious right activists will blame the tragedy on the video violence propagated by 'Hollywood liberals.' And cable television will rerun the same video clips umpteen times, fill the airways with talking ranters, and thus leave the impression that nothing else is happening anywhere in America or overseas, probably for the next week or so. (Which at least means that Don Imus gets a reprieve.)
"This is what happened after two twisted kids shot up the Columbine high school on April 20, 1999. We witnessed the national wringing of hands, the convening of symposia and the ritual assignations of blame -- and now we'll do it again, of course, before settling back into our routines until the next massacre provides a temporary jolt . . .
"Virginia's gun laws, for instance, are famously lax; there is no gun registration, and no mandatory waiting period. And, nationally, there are no mandatory background checks at gun shows; nor does Virginia choose to impose its own purchase restrictions. But you won't hear much about this from the Democratic presidential candidates, nor from the congressional Democratic leaders (indeed, nothing thus far), because they have long concluded that, as an issue, gun control is a political loser."
But Americablog's John Aravosis is quite mad about the situation, including at his own side:
"So your daughter has been stalked by some nutjob. How do you feel about the stalker being able to buy a gun in Virginia?
"It's one thing for normal people to buy guns -- I'm happy to debate, and consider, if that's okay. It's quite another for some guy who stalked two women. Why do we treat gun owners like they're something special. And oh yeah, so much for the 'oh but he always seemed so normal' defense. No, he didn't always seem so normal. In fact, he seemed quite abnormal. And Virginia sold him a gun anyway. And he even bought a bulletproof [v]est, which is interesting, because how many normal people need bulletproof vests? Raise of hands please. Yes, the answer would be zero.
"We have a gun problem and a violence problem in this country, and no one wants to touch it because the Republicans will be mean to us if we talk about gun violence."
The reason, says Politico, can be summed up in three letters:
"The National Rifle Association has money, motivated members and powerful allies in Congress. But what puts the NRA in a separate class among interest groups is its track record of defeating incumbents.
"In Washington, that is real power.
"Thus, calls for new gun control measures after the Virginia Tech shootings are likely to face a difficult path on Capitol Hill -- even with Democrats now in charge."
It all goes back to Al Gore, Salon reports:
"Gun control advocates haven't won a major victory since Bill Clinton was president, and since then the main anti-gun legislation of the Clinton era has either died or been stripped of its teeth . . .
"Democrats have been turning away from gun control ever since Al Gore's run for the presidency. The then-vice president and his advisors had tried to out-gun-control liberal challenger Bill Bradley during the Democratic primaries. Campaigning against George W. Bush in the general election, Gore decided to quiet his criticism of the NRA and mute his support for gun control to build support in battleground states like Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan where support for gun rights runs high. In the wake of Gore's loss, many Democrats blamed the defeat on previous pro-gun control positions Gore had taken, and pulled the party further back from where it had been on the issue."
It's all about values, the Wall Street Journal editorial page insists:
"A better response than gun control would be to restore some of the cultural taboos that once served as restraints on antisocial behavior. These columns long ago noted the collapse of such social and moral restraints in a widely debated editorial called 'No Guardrails.' Instead, after Columbine, there was a rush to blame violent videogames. But videogames or other larger media influences don't inspire mass murder when there are countervailing restraints and values instilled by families, teachers, coaches and pastors. Two generations ago, colleges felt an obligation to act in loco parentis. Today, the concept is considered as archaic as the Latin--and would probably inspire a lawsuit."
The ethnic aspect has not gone unnoticed, reports the Los Angeles Times:
"The sense of shock and shame that has engulfed the Korean American community in the wake of the murderous Virginia Tech rampage may seem overdone to some, but its roots are familiar to many minorities . . .
"When the spotlight settled on Seung-hui Cho on Tuesday, Korean Americans in Los Angeles wasted no time denouncing the crime, holding a candlelight vigil and prayer service -- extending, in effect, a collective olive branch to a society they worried might judge them harshly."
Let's sneak in some politics. A Washington Post poll has Rudy's lead over McCain shrinking, now 33 to 21, with Romney and Fred Thompson at 9 apiece. Hillary still leads Obama 37 to 20, with Gore at 17 and Edwards at 14.
And speaking of the "Law & Order" star, ABC reports: "Fred Thompson's top cheerleader on Capitol Hill -- Rep. Zach Wamp, R-Tenn. -- said Wednesday that the former Republican senator's entrance into the 2008 presidential race is a matter of when -- not if."
Can the governor of New Mexico actually have said this?
"Bill Richardson said the reason he has not called for the removal of AG Al Gonzales 'is that the two both have Hispanic backgrounds.' Richardson: 'It's because he's Hispanic. I'm honest.'"
Will that be the standard in a Richardson administration if someone gets into trouble?
Remember Reverend Al saying during his anti-Imus campaign that he was going to go after rap artists who sing about bitches and hos? Well, the New York Post has an update:
"Seeking to avoid being labeled a hypocrite, the Rev. Al Sharpton has 'suspended' plans to honor the head of Island Def Jam Music Group -- whose stable of singers includes foul-mouthed Ludacris.
"'We don't want to be inconsistent,' Sharpton told The Post. Sharpton led the charge that forced CBS and NBC last week to fire radio shock jock Don Imus for calling players on the Rutgers University's women's basketball team 'nappy-headed ho's.'"
But before the Imus flap, Sharpton was perfectly happy to honor Ludacris?
