2008 Woodie Awards
VT media coverage trivializes victims
Kyle Beall
Issue date: 4/25/07 Section: Opinion
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The tragedy at Virginia Tech is apparent and will plague the victims' families, the community of Blacksburg, Va., as well as the rest of the nation for a very long time.
In my opinion, such a tragedy is only compounded by the media's incessant coverage of what is clearly a very fresh and volatile situation.
After the school schooting tragedy at Columbine, I wrote the Bakersfield Californian expressing these same concerns.
When elementary schools start locking down their campuses because a 9-year-old student shows up at school with a list of names and a gun, well the media is just as much to blame as the parents.
Where did the student get the idea in the first place?
The next day, after the shootings at Virginia Tech, Bakersfield College received its own bomb threat.
I don't know that such asinine copycat behavior can be avoided but I do believe that the media's bleeding of the Virginia Tech story isn't going to help.
As a journalist now, I began to question my own news judgment, having these feelings about the media behaving like vultures and yet also knowing that as journalists we do have a responsibility to report accurate and reliable information, especially when something as horrendous as this violent attack takes place in one of our own public universities.
I am confused by the degree of public interest and outrage over the Virginia Tech shootings. This is because everyday, our soldiers are still dying in a senseless war in Iraq.
Have people become hardened to the fact that everyday, someone in the U.S. is losing a family member due to the continued occupation of Iraq?
Besides the extreme nature of what took place at Virginia Tech, it's apparent to me that this does affect our own campus and I feel it pertinent to ask just how safe we are at Bakersfield College, what precautions or plans are in place to protect us from something such as this?
I hope that The Renegade Rip's involvement in this media frenzy will end there.
In my opinion, such a tragedy is only compounded by the media's incessant coverage of what is clearly a very fresh and volatile situation.
After the school schooting tragedy at Columbine, I wrote the Bakersfield Californian expressing these same concerns.
When elementary schools start locking down their campuses because a 9-year-old student shows up at school with a list of names and a gun, well the media is just as much to blame as the parents.
Where did the student get the idea in the first place?
The next day, after the shootings at Virginia Tech, Bakersfield College received its own bomb threat.
I don't know that such asinine copycat behavior can be avoided but I do believe that the media's bleeding of the Virginia Tech story isn't going to help.
As a journalist now, I began to question my own news judgment, having these feelings about the media behaving like vultures and yet also knowing that as journalists we do have a responsibility to report accurate and reliable information, especially when something as horrendous as this violent attack takes place in one of our own public universities.
I am confused by the degree of public interest and outrage over the Virginia Tech shootings. This is because everyday, our soldiers are still dying in a senseless war in Iraq.
Have people become hardened to the fact that everyday, someone in the U.S. is losing a family member due to the continued occupation of Iraq?
Besides the extreme nature of what took place at Virginia Tech, it's apparent to me that this does affect our own campus and I feel it pertinent to ask just how safe we are at Bakersfield College, what precautions or plans are in place to protect us from something such as this?
I hope that The Renegade Rip's involvement in this media frenzy will end there.
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