Ethics Disgust

I have been researching the Virginia Tech massacre lately as to the ethics of the media coverage of the killer’s videoed, photographed and written manifesto. My conclusion there was that they did not show enough. Most major networks and cable outlets shortened their coverage of the killer’s declaration to less than 10 percent the following day after the fallout of angry viewers. Likewise, newspaper’s received a lot of flak for publishing photos of the killer and drastically reduced their visual coverage of the murderer.

Unfortunately, by cutting the coverage and still having it in miniscule form, these outlets lost the context of a killer needing to be understood completely, so those like him can be spotted, and twisted folks, too, learn that they are accountable for their own actions. Furthermore, it is important to see that the killer is showed in some pictures with guns and others with hammers, knives and other instruments because each state of mind is different. For example, posing with a hammer reflects a much more violent state than with a gun because of the physical force, the proximity and the messiness involved in the former.
When a man known as the Unabomber mailed his manifesto to the New York Times and the Washington Post, they were not going to publish it until the FBI asked them to. The language of the manifesto struck a chord with a reader who turned out to be Theodore Kaczynski’s brother and led authorities to the arrest. The Virginia Tech shooter materials could also produce the same results, spotting other would-be killers by their use of language and demeanor, or by producing materials, similar to the murderer. Ironically, there were a bunch of law enforcement officers and psychiatrists who said that publicizing the profile of the killer would produce copycats (and a lot more who said that was ludicrous). Remember, as journalists, we are not law enforcers, and these people are just there for us as sources, not policy-makers. Law enforcement may mean well, but they are more concerned about manipulating the media than our best interests or what’s ethical for us. It is the nature of their job, wearing a badge that gives them power over people and a gun that enforces that power. They are also people who lie, deceive others and sometimes even commit crimes, so they can catch the “bad guys.” We, as journalists, have much stronger ethical responsibilities and are not to be switched on or off at their requests.
I will instead fall back on leaders in our field. In the aftermath of the tragedy, Al Tompkins of the Poynter Institute stated, “The job of a journalist is not to protect us from the truth; it’s to tell us the truth, now matter how repugnant it is.” I think we can all agree that the videos, picture, etc. of the killer were repugnant, but we cannot let even our audience’s disgust hinder us from telling the truth. Thompkins also interviewed several other ethics experts who echoed his statement. There are podcasts of these interviews at http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=101&aid=121760.
Despite the incredible tragedy of losing 32 innocent lives, their deaths are not the story. The story is that a man murdered them. The killer’s manifesto gives the who, what and why of the story. By the end, NBC had only shown only about 10-15 total minutes of the 28-minute video throughout their entire coverage. Even the newspapers that had the insight to publish the photos right in our faces on the front page could only publish a couple at a time (because of space, presumably, but they could have had special sections to publish the manifesto in near-entirety). Answering to public outrage killed the major elements of the story and lost meaningful context, when, all along, people should have outraged and disgusted because society failed the shooter and his 32 victims. They knew this guy was mental since he was in junior high and they unleashed him on these victims. That is the only truth to this story.
And understanding the murderer to prevent future tragedies would not have been the only benefit. It would have also have cut down on the hysteria that accompanies such tragedies, and there wouldn’t be stories like the imaginative 13-year-old child at Fountain Hills Middle School who was just charged with a class 6 felony for compiling a “death wish list,” though he had no weapons, other means or intentions of carrying out the slaughter, and he was just being a 13-year-old boy.