As a former journalist, incidents like yesterday’s horrific and terrifying set of events at Virginia Tech bring back dark memories of past stories. The biggest being 9-11 a day, for me, that started with a psychology exam and was spent the most of the day getting my first real taste as a news writer. I was still a sports writer at the time.
Throughout the day as news was breaking at Virginia Tech, the media served two roles. It served to provide information to families, students, and the nation as to what was going on there. It also served to provide an outlet for students to communicate with families or perhaps let off some frustrations that we were all feeling yesterday.
For the most part, the media handled the event fairly well. There were a few things that I disagree with, but as my line of the day was in my office “we never would know how we would react in that situation.”
I say that line again today in reaction to stories today about the school’s response, in specific about the two hour delay in the two shootings. Questions about the delay in response, in my opinion, are second-day stories that though need to be asked have no relevance on the first day other than to serve the media’s own interests of playing the blame game. A first run of one story yesterday discussed if Charles Steger should be fired, in a story dominated from one family’s perspective. That kind of story breaks the rule of not allowing one person dominate a story.
Steger was right in saying there was no way to know there would have been a second shooting with the information that was available at the time.
The articles and questions seems to me like a game of Monday Morning Quarterback when there are more important stories that need to be written and shown to the world. The biggest being who was this student and what led to such a tragedy.
Sadly, though, the gun lobbies are already using this incident to advocate their positions. This from the Brady Campaign. The NRA refused comment until more facts were known, according to a statement on its Web site.
Let us remember the victims this day and save the questioning for later.
