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News Chief: NBC Made Mistake Airing Cho Tapes
The decision by NBC News to air some of the video and pictures sent by Virginia Tech shooter Cho Seung-Hui was a "mistake” that could encourage copycat killers, according to Tony Burman, Editor in Chief of CBC News in Canada.
Cho sent a package filled with rambling, hate-filled video and written messages, including pictures of him posing with a gun, to NBC News on the morning of his killing spree. NBC aired portions of the package on "NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams” Wednesday evening.
"At the CBC, we debated the issue throughout the evening and made the decision that we would not broadcast any video or audio of this bizarre collection,” Burman wrote on cbc.ca. "To decide otherwise – in our view – would be to risk copycat killings.
Story Continues Below "Speaking personally, I have long admired NBC News and I am sure my admiration of their journalists will endure. But I think their handling of these tapes was a mistake. As I watched them last night, sickened as I’m sure most viewers were, I imagined what kind of impact this broadcast would have on similarly deranged people. In horrific but real ways, this is their 15 seconds of fame.
"I had this awful and sad feeling that there were parents watching these excerpts on NBC who were unaware they will lose their children in some future copycat killing triggered by these broadcasts.”
NBC News President Steve Capus acknowledged that he faced a "tough call” in deciding what to do with the material Cho sent.
"We tried to be sensitive to the families involved and to the investigation,” he said in an interview with the Washington Post. He said it was "possible” that some relatives of the shooting victims may charge that the network gave the killer the platform he wanted, but he added that "they may also say, ‘We want to know why. We need to know what was in his head, what drove him to do this.’”
Some family members of the victims were so upset over NBC’s decision that they canceled plans to appear on the network’s "Today” show.
© NewsMax 2007. All rights reserved.
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