As this tragic week for college students comes to a close, I have been pondering one large question over and over again: Should NBC have aired the footage of Cho that he mailed to them after killing two students and before massacring 30 more?

I am a journalism student at a large school of communications, and issues like this one are highly debated in our classrooms. We are constantly given situations in class that a news director or journalist might run into and asked to figure them out ethically. I understand that NBC receiving this footage was a ratings jackpot and it would be hard to keep it contained…But I have come to the conclusion that NBC betrayed fundamental journalistic principles.

Was it wrong for NBC to air Cho Seung Hui’s Video?

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Sometime between the first and second shootings, NBC News reports that Cho Seung-Hui sent a “a rambling communication and videos about his grievences” to the network.

The package containing a 23 page diatribe and a 10 minute DVD arrived at 30 Rockefeller Plaza yesterday afternoon by US mail. The carrier alerted security to the orgin of the package and NBC notified the FBI.

NBC has released photos and video clips of the gunman’s last moments. They are insanely disturbing. He claims “This didn’t have to happen.” “You could have prevented this.” “You threw gasoline on the situation.” “You forced me into a corner.”

Click here to read the full story.

While the VTech tragedy was a rare, stupefying, isolated incident, the debate over carrying concealed weapons has been cracked open once again.

Here in Texas, now the site of the second-and-third most deadly mass shootings on American soil, people from students to doctors are arguing passionately for their right to carry a gun. Many conservative pundits (check out nationalreview.com for coverage of the pro-gun debate) are suggesting that it may be essential for every student to carry a gun in order to protect themselves should something happen in a classroom, or anywhere, for that matter.

I never really consider if anyone around me is carrying a gun; I don’t think I’ve even ever seen a real gun up close, besides on a police officer. But it is frightening to think that more people than I could imagine have weapons in their homes, their cars or actually on them.

And the thought of guns in the classroom, well, it makes me not want to go to class. Ever. I value safety and security, but not to the point where the pursuit of it causes me to live in fear of my lab partner’s semi-automatic going off in class. Read More »

“Cho was a loner and authorities are having a hard time finding information about him”

(Read the rest of the article here)

I’ve been checking CNN.com as much as possible these last couple of days, reading updates about VTech, wanting, like everyone else, answers. I want to know why. Who. Who does this sort of thing and why?

As of 2:00 pm this afternoon, nobody really knows. Authorities have his name, but that’s about it. They have his name and they know he was “a loner”.

I’m tired of that word. I’m sick and tired of hearing it attached to these boys who walk into their schools and shoot innocent people. When we’re grasping for reasons, grasping for solutions, this is word we keep slapping on the front page of every media outlet going to print. He was a loner. As if that explains everything.

It doesn’t. It never has. Not to me.

What does the word loner even mean? These killers had no friends? These killers never talked to anyone around them? They ate alone? They had no roommates? They never raised their hands in class? They didn’t interact with their families? They had social issues that everyone could feel? They dressed strange? All of the above?? Read More »