What a tragedy

What A Tragedy

A week ago the most horrific university shooting of U.S history occurred at Virginia Tech University.
Seung Hui Cho, a student, shot and killed 32 people (students and faculty). This was a devastating day.
The crazy part about all this is that we as viewers were able to watch the whole story unravel before our very eyes. Student journalists took out cell phones and recorded parts of the event. Others stood in their dorm rooms and took pictures with digital cameras. All of these things allowed the news to travel faster than ever.
It is crazy to see how journalism is evolving. Anyone and everyone is a journalist these days. With the use of technology (cell phone cameras and video tapes), it is easy to spread word of breaking news.
If this event had happened five years ago, the news would definitely not have gotten around as quickly as it did.
I was sitting at my television watching the event, and with each minute a new death was announced or a new video clip was played. The news was almost instant. Does this mean that journalists will soon not be needed? I mean CNN received FREE pictures from students. No one had to send out a photographer because they were getting all the photos for free.
With such a travesty as this, its pretty selfish to even talk about money, but these news stations are loving all this new technology because I am sure it is saving them a bundle.
Even Cho used media to get his point across. He made a horrific tape and sent it to NBC to that the media could relay his message to the world. Cho got exactly what he wanted. He used media to tell his side of the story and the world watched. I am not going to say I wouldn’t have wanted to see it if NBC refused to play it, but I am pissed Cho got what he wanted. And he is such a wimp for shooting himself, he couldn’t even be man enough to keep himself alive to explain his anger? So he used the media against us. What a coward.
The sad part about all this, is that this will happen again. From a journalist perspective it’s interesting to see how each incident like this is dealt with by the media.
I saw a news piece of a young woman who was in the Columbine shooting along with the Virginia Tech shooting. She said that she really didn’t want to talk to the media because of the way they behaved with Columbine. She said they didn’t give the community any space. Although it is so true that after something like this people should want their space, but again with a story such as Columbine or VT, it is hard (as a journalist) to give people space. The news does need to be told and from as many different perspectives possible. But I do understand how that would be annoying at such a time.
With the Virginia Tech incident, so much media was put out. Here are just a few of the websites that made photo stories, and multi media packages etc.
Multimedia “CRY FOR HELP”
http://abcnews.go.com/US/VATech/?CMP=google&partner=google&gclid=CISJiejh24sCFSgNIgodVWNnXw

http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2007/virginiatech.shootings/