Anna Nicole.
Imus.
And, now, Virginia Tech.
Each of the above stories knocked the usual newsroom planets out of alignment at the various cable current events channels, some more so than other.
The death of the Guess jeans model/well-married widow got WAY more attention among the legitimate media than it deserved, while the Don Imus flame-out gave us all a chance to debate race, respect and the culture of mean--things that I think don't get enough serious consideration until someone like a shock jock of politician self-immolates in front of a mike.
Virginia Tech? How can you NOT cover it? React to it? Put faces on it's victims? Ask about the ongoing trend of violence at school and the workplace?
There are some who say enough is enough--some at my daughter's college campus complained that all of the attention could inspire copycat situations in which another disaffected loner looking to make a statement ammo's up and unloads on the innocent.
It may--but then, what inspired THIS event? And, what should the media do with such stories?
Many newsrooms don't report suicides or bomb threats, the thinking being that the publicity could inspire someone else to follow suit. It's a policy I agree with (unless the incident causes some sort of incidental inconvenience for the greater general public, but that has to be looked at case by case).
That rule cannot apply to mass slaughter.
Yes, an unstable person could see the coverage and be inspired to follow suit. Then again, as history shows, these kind of people can be set off by the most innocuous slight: spurned affections, an insult, or some other "injustice", real or perceived.
What the media--in particular, the cable channels--need to do is remember that there are other news events still happening amid colossal tragedy. Huge, breaking stories deserve wall-to-wall attention. Swimming in ill-conceived sidebars just so there's something to show between somber music bumpers serves no purpose, other than to give the viewer reason to complain that the story is being beaten to death for ratings. Toward that end, local stations should keep looking for the angles that can tie a distant community to a huge event: the kid from town who saw/heard/actually witnessed what happened at Virginia Tech that fateful day strikes me as news. Talking to someone who graduated from the school years ago and wasn't even there at the time? That's a stretch that serves no function.
The media serve a powerful purpose at times like this--informing, comforting, and giving folks a shared experience to which they can react, recoil, recover, and repair. They can enlighten us as to what to look in each other--so that maybe, just maybe, someone intervenes before we live through another one of these nightmares.
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