Media Standards Trust

Should news organisations have broadcast the video of Seung Hui Cho, the VTech killer? Is the easy availability of content on the internet enough to justify screening on mainstream news channels, no matter how disturbing? How can the news media act ethically in the digital age?

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Context

On Monday 16th April at 7am Seung Hui Cho, a student at Virginia Tech university, shot two fellow students. After the shooting he calmly put together the finishing touches to his ‘multimedia manifesto’ - containing a typed 1,800-word diatribe, 28 video clips and 43 digital photos - and went to the post office to send it to the US news broadcaster NBC (source Alex Spillius). He then returned to the university and killed a further 30 students and teachers before turning the gun on himself.

Media influence on Cho: Cho spent months planning the shooting. The photographs he took of himself suggest he had been influenced by violent gangster movies such as the critically acclaimed South Korean film Oldboy, Matrix Reloaded and Face/Off (as reported by Ben Hoyle). The videos he made of himself indicate an embittered, alienated and mentally unstable young man full of anger at his fellow students. In them he cites as precedent the Columbine school massacres of 1999. Cho carefully constructed his multimedia package itself to allow for ease of use by news broadcasters, newspapers and websites.

‘User generated content’: some students used their phones to capture scenes from the massacre in video and still images. Others, locked in their rooms, used the internet to find information and communicate with the outside world. ‘Armed with little more than a Nokia N70 camera phone, a classroom notebook, and a reliable net connection… these students produced incredibly lucid, brazen journalism’, wrote Bernhard Warner in The Times. News organisations used this material in their coverage – with and without the permission of the students. Journalists accessed chat rooms to find possible interviewees (e.g. see appeals left on livejournal site).

NBC decides to broadcast: Cho's media package was wrongly addressed and did not arrive at NBC for two days. When it did NBC editors and executives debated for seven and a half hours whether to screen it. They decided they would, and that they would brand all Cho’s footage with the NBC logo and bleep out Cho’s swearing before releasing it to other news organisations (see Bill Carter in the New York Times).

Other news organisations follow suit: most other news organisations, in the US and worldwide, broadcast the footage – including, in the UK, the BBC, ITN and Sky. Almost all the UK national press linked to the video from front page lead stories on their websites. Many, including the Sun and at the Guardian, used an eye-catching picture of Cho with his arms spread wide holding two guns. The Sun’s headline read ‘Video Nasty - Maniac records video message - then kills 32 of his fellow students - watch video - click here'.

Public reaction: Many people expressed outrage at the screening of the video, especially in the US (Jenny Booth reports). The screening was criticised by some for being insensitive to victims, by others for giving Cho what he most wanted, and by others because Cho’s ‘success’ at gaining worldwide infamy could encourage other potential killers to act in the same way. Friends and relatives of victims cancelled interviews with NBC in protest. Police complained that “this is what this guy wants”, and a professor from the University of California argued that "There's a danger of all kinds of copy-cat people looking for media glory”. Other observers criticised the behaviour of journalists in approaching students so quickly and so aggressively after the event. On UK news websites there were hundreds of comments left about the behaviour of the media, much of them critical (see response to Horrocks). AnneCatherine’s comment on the Guardian OrganGrinder blog captures the attitude of many: ‘There has been excessive and detailed coverage of this sad day. It is in poor taste and goes far beyond 'informing' us’.

Journalists defend decision: in the UK both Sky and the BBC defended their decisions to broadcast. ‘We decided’, Peter Horrocks, BBC head of TV news, wrote on his editor’s blog, ‘that playing short clips, responsibly contextualised, could aid understanding of the story’. "Whether you like it or not’, said John Ryley, the editor of Sky News, ‘the tapes that were aired by NBC are a crucial bit of building up the jigsaw of what motivated the guy when he carried out the killings. That's harsh, but that's the world we live in." In the Times Bronwen Maddox argued NBC was right to show the ‘demented ramblings’ because it demonstrates Cho was mentally ill, and ‘that is reassuring’. After two days of broadcasting the footage, US networks decided to scale back their use (reports Jack Shafer on slate.com).

Questions

Were the news media right to broadcast Cho’s video? Is there a danger it will encourage others to act in the same way?

In what circumstances – if any – should major news organisations refrain from showing such footage? 

What limits – if any – should there be on the use of ‘user generated content’?

Should mainstream news organisations authenticate user generated content / citizen journalism? How? When does authentication become intrusion?

Are ethical concerns still relevant in the digital media age? Given virtually anyone can take video, audio and photographs and upload them to the web, are ethics inevitably becoming market driven?

Recommended:

'We can see the causes of Cho's rampage now, so why not before?', Niall Ferguson, Sunday Telegraph, 22-4-07

'Notoriety beats anonymity', Theodore Dalrymple, The Times, 20-4-07

'Stop the press: the internet is now the first draft of history', James Robinson, The Observer, 22-4-07

'America's first user-generated confession', Bobbie Johnson and Conor Clarke, Media Guardian, 23-4-07