A debate is underway in the blogosphere about NBC’s decision to release only a portion of the videos sent to the network by Cho Seung-Hui. NBC wrestled with the decision to air any of the videos the killer recorded, and ultimately decided to release only a portion of the content.
Following outrage by relatives of the shooting victims and the wider Viriginia Tech community, NBC issued a statement defending its decision, noting that dark videos provide “some answers to the critical question, ‘why did this man carry out these awful murders?’”
Now the network apparently has decided to keep out of public view the full set of 28 video clips Cho mailed to NBC between his first and second bouts of carnage. The material is too disturbing, and no one wants to see Cho gain any further attention for his beyond-words awful deeds. No one wants to give Cho what he seemingly wanted: notoriety, stardom, recognition.
On top of this concern, some people think Cho’s videos will foster copycats. As Dave Winer points out, however, we’d all like to know what’s on those videos (the proverbial public’s right to know) and it’s unlikely that a imitator would be any more spurred on if the full set of videos were released.
We don’t know what’s on the videos. And do you think anyone who wanted to see them hasn’t seen enough to get the basic idea?
In addition, the Internet has changed the rules of the game. Jeff Jarvis makes the point that it’s almost a quaint notion these days that any news organization or information outlet should pick and choose what the public gets to know.
There is no control point anymore. When anyone and everyone — witnesses, criminals, victims, commenters, officials, and journalists — can publish and broadcast as events happen, there is no longer any guarantee that news and society itself can be filtered, packaged, edited, sanitized, polished, secured.
More information is almost always better than less information. Who knows? Maybe a highly astute psychologist would stumble upon an idea that unlocks the terrible mysterty of Cho if he or she gained full access to the videos. That knowledge, that insight, would pay off in averted tragedies down the road, sparing some other family the kind of heartache that too many families feel today. Maybe we’ll all learn a little something if we study his disturbed ramblings in full, something that we might not learn from only the hand-picked videos.
Granted, we will probably learn little aside from the fact that Cho was a very ill young man. But if there’s a chance, however tiny, that some new bit of knowledge can be obtained from the videos, they should be set free.
As for copycats, does anybody really believe that simple exposure to Cho’s videos would trigger another round of unthinkable horror? It might, actually, do the opposite. It might shock would-be violent offenders into realizing how pathetic someone like Cho was.
Cho obviously suffered from some sort of mental illness, fostered either by past severe abuse or a chemical imbalance or both. No amount of video viewing would encourage or inhibit violent behavior in someone so damaged. These kinds of killers are impervious to outside influences. Cho certainly seemed to be.
The only reason to not release the videos is to spare the victims’ families further pain. That’s a very good reason, but not good enough to outweigh the potential knowledge the videos might yield.
Cynthia Brumfield at 12:51 PM|Comments(0)
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