April 21, 2007
Crime and Punishment Department
Raving Madmen
Ron Coleman is criticizing NBC's decision to air parts of Cho Seung-Hui's video. Cho is the guy who killed 32 people at Virginia Tech, and it appears that between the first shooting incident and the second he sent a package to NBC News in New York. That package contained an "often incoherent 23-page written statement, 28 video clips and 43 photos." In other words, it was the killer's media kit.
Coleman quotes from an ABC News interview with forensic psychiatrist Michael Welner:
"If anybody cares about the victims in Blacksburg and if anybody cares about their children, stop showing this video now. Take it off the Internet. Let it be relegated to YouTube," Welner said. "This is a social catastrophe. Showing the video is a social catastrophe."
To which Coleman adds:
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. But this is merely Son of Frankenstein, for it was the 1995 publication by the New York Times and Washington Post of the Unabomber’s nutty, blood-soaked “manifesto” that established the recent precedent of media outlets providing the most highly-sought-after reward in today’s world — fame, and a “platform” for grievances — to killers.
I'm pretty sure Coleman is wrong about the decision to publish the Unabomber Manifesto. The papers probably would have published a few juicy excerpts, simply because it was newsworthy, but they only published the entire manifesto because the FBI asked them to.
The thinking was that someone might recognize certain ideas or turns of phrase, which would lead directly to the Unabomber's identity. And that's exactly what happened. David Kaczynski recognized it as the writing of his brother Ted and told the FBI where to find him.
Nobody accused the FBI or the media of contributing to the Unabomber's fame when they showed that famous sketch of him and asked people to identify him. When they published his manifesto, they were just doing the same thing with a 35,000-word writing sample.
The same logic would apply to Cho's video if he was still at large and still unidentified. Airing the video would greatly help in identifying and ultimately capturing him. Unfortunately for NBC, Cho is dead. Airing his video isn't going to help. It's pure sensationalism.
And according to Welner, it may have a cost:
"I promise you the disaffected will watch him the way they watched 'Natural Born Killers.' I know. I examine these people," he said. "I've examined mass shooters who have told me they've watched it 20 times. You cannot saturate the American public with this kind of message."
Welner maintained, however, that he was not blaming the media for airing the footage.
"It's not an issue of blame. It's an appeal. Please stop now. That's all," he said. "If you can take [talk show host Don] Imus off the air, you can certainly keep [Cho] from having his own morning show."
I generally distrust anyone who doesn't want the press to cover a story, but Welner is making a pretty good point. There is evidence that these kinds of mass murderers are interested in the stories of other mass murderers, and that they may even use these stories to encourage themselves to go through with it. I have no doubt that Cho's video will be viewed by others who will use it as inspiration for their own crimes.
(In fact, in the two days it took me to find the time to write this, there's already been a story about another shooting, this time at NASA.)
Nevertheless, I think Coleman makes too much of NBC's decision to air the video. First of all, even if NBC had turned the video over to the FBI without making a copy, it would have gotten out one way or another, probably through a Freedom of Information Act request, and would be all over the Internet anyway. NBC just decided to go first.
Second, people planning mass murder will seek out materials that excite them, and in our media-rich culture they can always find something that turns them on: movies, television shows, video games, novels, religious texts, rock lyrics.
Third, if they can't find stuff that excites them, they just make stuff up. Some of these killers have survived their killing sprees and been interviewed by forensic psychologists. They often mis-remember story details or song lyrics in ways that reinforce their own desires.
Still, I'm not planning to watch the video.
"[Cho] needs to create and produce his own picture in order to give himself a sense of power. Nobody saw him that way. He didn't see himself that way and that's why he set this up and he did this to achieve immortality. We have to stop giving him that and we can do it now."
...
"There's nothing to learn from this except giving it validation. If this rambling showed up in an emergency room, my colleagues and I would listen carefully and, when we reflected that it was delusional, would go see the next patient and start the medication," he said. "This makes it sound like he was tormented. He wasn't."
Most of us have nothing to learn from watching Cho's video. I haven't seen it, and I have no interest in seeing it, because whatever Cho has to say is not worth listening to. That's also why I've never watched interviews of Charles Manson or read the Unabomber Manifesto: The ravings of a madman are useful only to people who study madmen.
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Your points are fair ones, Mark. I think you actually agree with me more than you want to say, because there is such a disinclination to sound like a censor. I certainly never suggested NBC should have been prevented by anyone from making its own decision here.