Unhappy medium
Posted: Thursday, April 19, 2007 2:47 PM by Will Femia
If you haven't gone so far as to express your opinion on a message board, chances are good that you've at least muttered under your breath what you think of the decision made by NBC News to make public some of the material mailed to them by murderer Cho Seung-hui. The range of opinions online shows that NBC News would have a hard time finding a happy medium.
At one end of the spectrum of opinion, self-described technology utopian Dave Winer advocates the release of everything. "NBC should release all of the videos in Quicktime form as downloads. It's wrong to withhold them."
If Winer's words sound a bit adamant Doc Searls is more expository. Searls essentially agrees with Winer. "I believe the need to reveal outweighs the need to conceal." He goes on to elaborate on the principles we see largely espoused in the tech community and how they apply in this instance. (If you click one link in this entry...) The phrase we hear most often is wisdom of the masses. The more minds put to a problem, the more likely it is the problem will be solved. "It's about no longer depending on The Media alone." It's easy to see how this also works with the libertarian leanings of many Web citizens. Mainstream media already faces charges from news bloggers of appointing itself the public "mommy" instead of disseminating the information so individuals can decide for themselves. Searls concedes that bad things could come from releasing the entire NBC package, but his is a philosophy of optimism.
Technology can also be a reason to oppose the publishing of the Cho material. The bad things Searls concedes lead the arguments from the opposite end of the spectrum of opinion. Siva Vaidhyanathan decries the inevitability of the "mashup/YouTube effect." On his blog he posts a few benign examples of what any honest web surfer must admit will be much worse. Releasing full videos as downloads along with the photos and text in this digital age is the sure path to granting Cho online immortality. There can be no doubt we'll soon see his words and images in movies, songs, games and who knows what else. But as long as we're being honest it must be said that it's less certain that NBC is really in a position to stop any of this.
More common than concern about the mashup effect is concern about the copycat effect. "The blood of the victims of the 'next one' is on the hands of everyone in the decision-making chain at NBC for this utterly inexcusable decision," says one blogger, outraged at NBC. "If you watch any football game (and presumably every other televised pro sport), if a liquored-up fan attempts to run onto the field, the television director in the control truck cuts as quickly as possible to another angle--any angle--to (a) not give some knucklehead his 15 seconds of fame and (b) to discourage others from attempting the same stunt," blogs Ed Driscoll. Cho Seung-hui, it should be noted, did not need the benefit of full disclosure to commit his copycat act.
Driscoll agrees that the material itself is newsworthy, but his crazed fan metaphor works for another argument against publication. I can report that a common complaint in the comments submitted to this blog is that Cho wanted his words, images and video published and a person like that shouldn't get anything he wants, period. In that regard, a lot of people are pointing to the debate over the publication of the Unabombers manifesto as a parallel to this one.
Speaking of comments submitted to this blog, the other strong theme I see is sensitivity to the families involved and human decency as a whole. As best as I can tell, this is the one concern that is also shared by NBC's own decision making process. I haven't spoken to my colleagues at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in an official capacity, but I have had several casual conversations and there is a bevy of material NBC News has offered:
From these I derive a short list of considerations that went into the decision to publish the "multimedia manifesto." First is newsworthiness. Even critics like Mr. Driscoll, above, agree that the contents of Cho's package are worth releasing to the public in some fashion for both the journalistic purpose of telling the story but also the social purpose of helping society understand what happened and hopefully learn some useful lessons. Of course, the perennial objection of news bloggers is that they don't trust the judgments that decide what's newsworthy and, more importantly, what isn't. Most disturbing to me in my casual chats today was a colleague who disagreed with my assessment of the content of the manifesto (specifically the degree of religiosity of Cho) and suggested I read more. Maybe my colleague meant that I should read the available material more closely, but since I do not have access to more, the possibility that I'm not getting the full picture from what's already been released is a problem for me.
Some of the mission of reporting the news flies in the face of concerns about doing the killer's bidding or glorifying him, but that's not to say NBC doesn't recognize that there's a line that shouldn't be crossed. In the Early Nightly video, Williams makes it clear that NBC has heard the criticism that overuse of images and video for promotional purposes is exploitation, not news. His labeling it "video wallpaper" reminds me of the post-9/11 decision limiting the use of footage of planes flying into the Twin Towers. Unless it's relevant and part of the furthering of the story, it's not to be used. It's not clear whether NBC plans to release more from Cho's package, but I take Williams to mean that we're not getting any more unless something comes up in the investigation that relates to as-yet unreleased material. Even in that case, NBC's standards with regard to profanity will probably prevent a full, uncensored distribution from ever happening (barring unauthorized leaks).
What else makes me wonder if we'll see more than has already been released is the degree to which NBC took into consideration the emotional state of the victims' families and the general populace. Even on my previous entry looking at the online lives of the victims I received a comment that it was "too soon." When April 16, 2008 comes around, will the environment be more appropriate for more?
