The interesting part about The Collegiate Times releasing this information is that the information was only available to families of the victims through an encrypted database.
College Media Matters, a blog about "influential, controversial, innovative, and newsworthy matters impacting contemporary college media worldwide," which was featured on Poynter Institute's website, stated that the most impressive thing The Collegiate Times did was publishing the papers during a time that the newspaper doesn't normally publish. The newspaper believed the issue to be so time-sensitive that they worked outside of the normal publication schedule. I have to agree that if a newspaper believes a story to be the most important story out there, then they must work as hard as possible to ensure its publication, even if it means publishing outside of the normal publication schedule.
The newspaper published the April 16th documents the day after the victims' families received them.
The same newspaper, The Collegiate Times, was the first media outlet to break news on the Virginia Tech massacre, starting online coverage at 9:47 a.m. the day of the shootings.
It is also impressive to note that The Collegiate Times did an excellent job in formatting the information into an accessible and readable database.
However, the obvious elephant that I have thusfar ignored is the ethics behind The Collegiate Times reporting. I believe that it was important and necessary for The Collegiate Times to release the information found in the April 16th documents. Part of the role of the press is to be a watchdog of the authorities and the other part is to give the public the ability to analyze the truth for themselves. The Collegiate Times, without placing any opinion, published verbatim the April 16th documents; this publication allows students at Virginia Tech to analyze the truth and see what their administration is up to. It was a bold and a difficult decision but I applaud The Collegiate Times for being faithful in their duties.
I followed your links and I found out that some of the information that the Collegiate Times posted was "old news" and "already public." According to another student, "It has been public for months, by going to Burruss Hall and making an appointment with University Relations. The information was already digitized, at www.prevailarchive.org."
ReplyDeleteI did find this blog to be interesting though because it brought a new standpoint. Instead of telling us what we already knew, you supported the Collegiate Times on their ability to report to the public.
Although I agree that the public should have access to this information because it is/was history in the making, I believe that some of it should still be kept off the record and shown only to the families of the victims involved in the incident.
I find it fascinating how fast they responded to the story shortly after it happened. But then again you have to think about, what if the shoe was on the other foot.
ReplyDeleteI guess that is one reason why I changed my major to P.R from Journalism, because it was so depressing to report about the news and that can affect how your life on a daily bases can be.
I would hate for one of my family members to past away and everytime I turn on the TV or the radio its about them. News was not always the most positive entity but it has surely become more negative.