*Traditional media fail at Blacksburg
Posted on April 23, 2007 in Media by DM
Having grown up in the era of the Watergate scandal, and consequently following the drama that surrounded journalism’s new ’stars’ like Woodward and Bernstein (and later, Janet Cooke), I’ve long been fascinated by the inner workings and politics of the newsroom. So, while I watched with the rest of my nation in horror and grief as the events at Virginia Tech unfolded last week, I found myself drawn frequently not to the main story of violence and bloodshed (which, honestly, I can hardly bear to read or watch) but to the sidebar stories of how the Blacksburg events unfolded in the media.
Immediately two things struck me, and have already been written about at length: 1). the traditional news media were being relegated to a secondary role while those directly involved in Monday’s events turned to social media such as MySpace and Facebook to post photos, seek answers, and ultimately, sadly, to express condolences. And 2). NBC news had, with one bad decision, become indelibly linked to the tragedy by burning their logo into the images that the mass murderer had sent them.
The first of these observations represents the beginning of a trend, away from formerly trusted establishment news sources and toward more personal, in-the-moment tools that will shape our understanding of events in ways we probably cannot even imagine at this point. The second of them represents the culmination of the major media’s obsession with macabre news packaging and quest for status as the go-to source.
My thoughts and prayers are with the families and friends of those murdered on April 16. I have no words… there are no words…. that will comfort or heal them. My hope is, that through all of this, those who seek to tell the stories of humanity will once again find their soul and use their God-given talents to report, and sometimes interpret, without adding to the pain.
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