News-Record.com

I am not really concerned with what other newspapers did, just my hometown paper.

What you did was give every future lunatic the message that you will make sure their deranged message gets out. The next guy who kills 32+ people is assured that the News & Record will give his message and image front page treatment.

Yes, it was news, but it was also wrong to glamorize this sick individual, and cowardly to hide behind that excuse. Will you run as prominent a picture of each of his victims? I think not. You could simply have run a picture of Cho from his license or ID, but instead you chose to run a picture the murderer would have been proud of, a picture which glorified a murderer.

In our life we have many instances were our morality and ethics are tested. Can you honestly say you passed this latest test? Could you look a father, mother, husband or wife in the eye and say you are proud of what you did? That what you did served some noble journalistic purpose and is worth the pain it inflicted on the family of the victims and the community you serve?

Your assumption that no family members live in this area, and thus they won't see the picture, is pretty cavalier. There are people in this community who have lost family members to people like Cho.

You have just metaphorically spit on them.

"The video doesn't fully answer that, but it comes close by portraying Cho as the armed and dangerous maniac he was."

I would have thought that the killings themselves were testament enough to the fact that he was an armed and dangerous maniac.

"sometimes the news isn't pretty"

can i be the first to call that straight up bulls**t? this isn't the "news" -- this is an opportunity to sell more papers and more advertising.

congratulations for following the herd. you can link to poynter and talk about solving the big "why" question all you want, jr, but you know this was a business decision, pure and simple.

blah, blah, blah...

I going to do somehing, I have never did before ( reckon it something in my oatmeal) take up for the press. Hindsight works well. I think everyone will agree now it was a mistake. I do not feel it had a thing to do with selling papers, all the media jumped all over this. I wonder how much heat, they would have got if they had not shown this? Sometimes you just can not win.Was this one of those times?

David, I think you can make the moral argument from various sides. Obviously, I don't think our actions were irresponsible, but I can understand how some do.

Yes, Stew, everyone knew he was nuts, but what drove him to this? The tapes seemed to go a long way toward telling us his thoughts.

Sean, I vigorously support the idea of selling more newspapers. But, with due respect, you don't know what you're talking about. You're suggesting that by our putting that photograph on the front page -- a scene that had been replayed on television endlessly throughout the evening and morning -- people are going to rush out and buy the paper? Had I believed that, and had I really wanted to exploit this for business reasons, I would have run a direct photo -- not a reproduction from a television screen in a restaurant -- of Cho. And done it bigger. No, this wasn't a big seller. You think advertisers want to be in a paper with that on the front page? Nope, but it was news, ugly as it is.

"Yes, Stew, everyone knew he was nuts, but what drove him to this? The tapes seemed to go a long way toward telling us his thoughts."

But it's what he said on the tapes that tell us his thoughts. The images don't add to that explanation. They may reinforce the fact that he was nuts, but as I said, considering his actions, the images are superfluous.

I agree that it's silly to think that you ran the image thinking it would sell more papers, but I also think that in running such images (as many media outlets did) the potential for harm (glorifying the killer, rubbing the wounds of the survivors) outweighs any potential explanatory or news value.

please. this guy is a car wreck and anyone passing the paper on the stand in a coffee shop or on the street is rubbernecking to see it more closely.

nobody "rushes" out to buy newspapers in general anymore, jr.

so a few more papers are sold (i'd love to see exactly how many across all papers that featured this sick bastard) and there are better numbers to report next cycle to the ad sales dept.

of course advertisers didn't line up to be next to this clown's grill in the paper, but the residual effect will be felt through bean counting and reporting, no matter how small.

and you're trying to tell me that the "news" was that this lunatic made a tape of himself in killer poses, rambled on in a diatribe and sent a copy to nbc before killing 30 people?

what exactly am i to do with this "news", john? how is this informing me about the world around me? or did i just learn that every paper in america will expose anything a mass murder wants, posthumously?

great.

i feel so much more informed.

OK, believe what you want about what sells papers, Sean. I'm telling you that this sort of photo didn't. But there's no point in arguing that with you.

As for your other questions, are you referring to the photo or about the overall coverage? You may not have been curious about what was on the tape and what the killer said, but I believe that most citizens are. And yes, it is news what he said, ugly as it is. I can't imagine that many people would be pleased if the tape had been made, but no one reported what the lunatic said.

you're right, jr. there is no point in arguing.

if nbc reported that the killer wrote about x and said y and left it at that, i'd have no problem with it being "news" coverage.

giving the killer a platform, though, doesn't do squat to inform anybody about anything. there is nothing that exposing his video/diatribe will do to prevent another massacre like this.

welcome to life, where crazy stuff happens out of the blue sometimes.

what publishing his thesis tells us is that the mainstream media will never expose your perspective unless you kill a bunch of innocent people.

you know, make it "newsworthy"

the picture of cho on a tv screen being watched by the same rubbernecking folk i spoke of earlier, reads only as social commentary of said rubbernecking.

so if you take that line, sure it has value. but you're not. you're defending the echo chamber.