Wednesday, April 18, 2007
VA Tech Shooting: Media Coverage Example of Scope of the Story
The Virginia Tech shooting will probablyh wind up being the biggest news story of 2007. USA Today is running a story in Wednesday's edition on how the amount of media in that showed up to cover reflects the large scale of the tragedy:If only we were as good at preventing tragedies as we've become at recording them.
Instead, once again, a medium that so often divides us united us in grief. First, TV brought us together in horror, as early matter-of-fact reports of a Virginia Tech shooting ballooned into coverage of the country's deadliest ever. On Tuesday, it brought us together in sorrow, at a moving convocation service broadcast live across every major network outlet — at least until ABC made the unfortunate decision to leave early, cheating its audience out of Nikki Giovanni's rousing final address.
We've come to recognize this televised unity as a signal that a crisis has grown to national proportions. It was a message repeated by President Bush at his most down-home eloquent, declaring it "a day of sadness for our entire nation. … In this time of anguish, I hope you know that people all over this country are thinking about you." MORE
# posted by ATN @ 12:05 AM 
