The news-cycle looping of the "multimedia manifesto" is way over the top, but I commend NBC for showing what they did, how they did and why they did. It was even from the grave, something that if it had not come out now, would certainly have come out in more sordid ways in the future.
The hypocrisy of it is in watching all networks, some with anchors/reporters seemingly irritated, agitated and, frankly, competitively jealous that it was NBC and not "them" that got the package -- doing what they are.
For instance, CNN -- apologizing all day about how sorry that the videos and pictures are being shown "by NBC" and that the lives and honor of the absolutely unfortunate victims is "just what we're doing" ... and then, voila! Quicktime clips with captions of the murderer and every picture that NBC (and everyone else) is showing,) followed by near tearful reporters saying, "How awful..."
Whyl, then, is CNN (Fox, CBS, NBC, MSNBC et al) still running it ad nauseum in every 22 minute cycle?
With as much mistrust of the main stream media, this is a voyeuristic society hard to please.
Media is under scrutiny every minute and there are distinct battlelines long drawn. On one side, media comes out with "news" without substantiation, confirmation, affirmation and more "to serve the need to know."
Sometimes, the accusation of being a part of the uncompassionate, insensitive, over-analytical "liberal" media of all forms.
Then, people turn the other cheek and without this type of "information" and suddenly, media is nothing but a group of politically manipulated puppets filled with conspirators who secretly hide that which we know but that we don't want you to know.
Imagine NBC's situation: NBC gets package. Post office confirms a hand-delivered package to NBC, at a wrong address not once but three times. (That word would have gotten out in time.) NBC News says, "Now, what do we do?"
Even without the desire to be part of the story NBC figures, "If it gets out that we got this and turned it over immediately to law enforcement, not making any copies (since it was, after all, their property at that point,) then what?
Many people, would think, "What is NBC hiding?" Why didn't they show the people what the package contained? Why did they squelch "the news" in a developing situation so full of questions? "We won't get the story from law enforcement as it really is."
NBC would have been hammered.
On the other hand, the network shows things exactly (they say) as they got it and they still get blasted for exposing "the truth" in a horrific, hurtful, painful, sensationalized way. "They should not have shown it" others say. Who's right?
If this murderer had lived and gone on trial, don't you think this would have been gavel-to-gavel coverage on every network going?
You can bet it would have been.
Many of us, as Jack Nicholson once said, "Can't take the truth!" So, we depend on the blogs, the papers, the online informists, the grapevine, rumor, conjecture, speculation, innuendo and all to formalize the news as "we" want it -- not as it really is.
News, as we know, doesn't work that way.
NBC had no choice and they made the right decision, in this unpopular opinion.
If only media, including NBC, was as honest in its coverage of other "news" without a bias, liberal or otherwise, we'd be more tolerant and trusting of the media.
Amazing, that the very people complaining about the coverage, and rightfully so in its excess, are the same people who didn't exercise their right to turn it off ... and are the one's chattering around the watercooler today about "Did you see that __________ (fill in expletive, here.)
Go figure. It's the "damned if you do - damned if you don't" scenario.
