CNN is marking the one-year anniversary of the V-Tech murders by showing the given-to-NBC photos of the killer brandishing his weapons.
Here's a poem I wrote last year about cable news and eagerness to fill airtime with sensational footage:
WE NEED PICTURES
If we don’t show it, someone might bootleg it
and put it on YouTube.
If we don’t show it and someone bootlegs it and
puts it on YouTube, then it will become a story on
competing networks.
If we don’t show it and someone bootlegs it and
puts it on YouTube and it becomes a story on
competing networks, we’ll lose valuable ratings points.
If we don’t show it and someone bootlegs it and
puts it on YouTube and it becomes a story on competing networks
and we lose valuable ratings points, we’re losing millions of dollars.
And we can’t lose millions of dollars when the news division
is always expected to be profitable.
We’ll give our anchors the company line that broadcasting the killer’s ranting videos
and pointing-9mm Glock-at-camera photos are vital to understanding
the workings of a disturbed mind.
And if we make the grieving families and friends of the thirty-two
murdered people cry a lot harder and have sleepless nights and suffer
traumas for years, then that’s just too bad for them.
We can reach—and hold onto—millions of eyeballs.
We WILL show it.
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