The Observer, April 20, 2007
Volume XXXIX, Issue 25
Free Speech Zone: Tragic events must not be exploited
The unthinkable tragedy that befell Virginia Tech this past week has been appropriately discussed in the offices, classrooms, and kitchens of America for what it was – a national tragedy. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of our country's mainstream media outlets. While the Virginia Tech campus tried to cope with the horrific reality of Monday's events, reporters and journalists from all over the world swarmed in, probing shocked students and traumatized survivors for information. "What did you see?" "What happened next?" "What was he wearing?" These were the questions that bombarded the still-bewildered campus community as the media hounds fought each other to be the first on the story. This shooting is already as well-documented as the J.F.K. assassination!
These reporters may have had the best of intentions, but their actions were not only insensitive, they were downright immoral. This sensationalist display amounts to nothing more than a celebration of violence by a media thirsty for the phenomenal and spectacular, a media just waiting for the next exploitable tragedy. One needs only to turn to one of the sordid 24-hour television news stations (or its website) to witness the appalling "depth" of journalism that the media has endeavored to bring the American public. Even the usually respectable BBC could not help but succumb to the desire to fetishize the event with the minute-by-minute movements of the killer, timetables, maps, and photos of the deceased. There has even been widespread distribution of a cell phone video taken by a fleeing student amid the chaos. What purpose could this serve but to one-up a competing news outlet, get "the inside scoop," on the ground as it happens?
It was bad enough when these news mega-corporations spent two months covering the Anna Nicole saga while there were much more newsworthy goings-on throughout the world. To act in this manner when an actual tragedy occurs is the height of obnoxious journalism. Tragic events should not be avoided, but is it too much to ask that the media not revel in them?
For all the hours and hours of picking apart almost every conceivable aspect of this devastating event, the most important questions will never be asked. Why was a man with a history of mental illness allowed to buy two handguns and dozens of rounds of ammunition without a second look? What is it about our culture that continually produces shocking outbursts of mass murder and indiscriminate killing at a rate several times that of Canada and European countries? Why did Congress and the Bush administration allow pro-gun lobbyists to talk them out of renewing the Assault Weapons Ban in 2004 when 30,000 Americans are killed by guns each year? And the most important question of all: Why does our media resort to bald sensationalism in the face of tragedy, instead of addressing the issue at a human level and giving the grief-stricken the space and time they deserve?
Pieragastini is a senior History and International Studies major involved with Catalyst: Students for Social Justice, Case-ACLU, and the Philosophy Society.
