Media, society, and the easing of conscience

Media, society, and the easing of conscience

I am probably only contributing to the problem by posting. But nowadays we seem to think that working out our feelings is a public right. I have many feelings in response to the VT shootings… but the thing that I feel most strongly about and the one that prompted me to write is the ongoing media coverage. First of all, I am horrified that NBC chose to air the killer’s tapes. Clearly, we are fulfilling the wishes of a very disturbed person, albeit post-mortem, by perpetuating his infamy. It is sick and wrong—it is not a news story. I don’t have a problem with them reporting on the tapes or the content of the tapes… but of course, our voyeuristic society demands the spectacle of the whole sad and horrifying diatribe of this young man. And boy, did he know his audience. He was disturbed, sad, and lonely and continually acted out in a manner consistent with crying out for help… none of his actions were justifiable—in fact, they were truly despicable, but clearly he wanted attention. And when he failed to get it, he capitalized on the least considerate parts of all of us: the violent and the detached. Though he is dead, he got what he wanted. And we continue to give it to him by sensationalizing the horrific acts he committed.

I was a dedicated watcher of NBC, but the Today show went and dug up a student who attended Columbine High (she was a freshman there and in the cafeteria at the time of the school shootings in 1999) and Virginia Tech (now a senior there) who was obviously reluctant to interview. God knows how much they paid her to get her on the show, and she did take a few minutes at the end of her interview to try and express her doubts about the media coverage of these incidents. Yet in the end, she contributed to it by agreeing to appear and by letting the media manipulate her emotions. And as if that wasn’t disturbing enough, then the Nightly News airs the tape of the killer, driving the final nail in the coffin of journalistic integrity in America today. Life has turned into one big reality show, and it is profoundly disturbing. We have all become consumers of a media machine that appeals to the lowest common denominator of humanity.

I think there is something shallow and hollow about the claims that Facebook groups and Myspace pages somehow benefit the VT community in healing. It becomes too easy to claim that we share in the pain and loss of others. I thought of this this morning while watching a segment about volunteers in New Orleans, a city still half in ruins and still ignored. We all contribute our $10 to the Hurricane Katrina fund… but do we really care what happens next? We put up a facebook picture stating that we are all Hokies… but we’re in fact holding onto the painful selfish secret—we’re glad we’re not Hokies. We’d rather watch from afar from the precarious safety of our own worlds. And let’s be honest- it is only human to feel that way, to feel the unbridled relief that we and our loved ones will live another day. But we refuse to acknowledge that basic human fact—that grief is private, that this tragedy does not belong to us. Yes, the world is smaller than ever, and there is a common thread of humanity in all who suffer. I am not advocating a lack of empathy, I am just trying to emphasize that consuming, creating, or spreading media messages does NOT equal empathy. It may be a part of empathy but it lacks the compassion and difficulty of empathy. We are too quick to absolve ourselves of the duty of caring for others—which may in fact include giving them space and time for grief, and deciding to withhold the ugly, self-indulgent confessions of a killer.