Sunday, April 22, 2007
They keep talking, even when there's nothing to say
Dan Radmacher
Recent columns
- Heading back to the debate in Appalachia
- Redistricting process must be taken from pols
- A shutdown remains a very real possibility
- U.S. Navy Vets case argues for campaign limits
From the RoundTable blog
When a horrific tragedy like the Virginia Tech shootings strikes, I pity broadcast journalists. The expectation in an event of this magnitude is that radio and television stations will provide what a Roanoke radio station called "wall-to-wall coverage."
Even in the Internet age when instant updates are expected, newspapers have the luxury of waiting to actually learn and verify something new before they post it online.
Broadcasters have empty air to fill, even when developments are slow in coming, like they were during the day of the worst shooting in American history.
I understand the dilemma. This was an important story. It deserved ongoing coverage. But the necessity to keep talking even when there was nothing new to say led to some very disappointing moments.
The most ludicrous was when a local radio anchor asked a reporter on the scene at Virginia Tech, "So, what's the mood on campus?"
The reporter managed a competent answer. Mine, I fear, would have been along the lines of, "Thirty students have been shot dead. What do you think the mood is on campus?"
Tech students interviewed on national television also showed more restraint than I could have mustered, especially a couple who appeared on CNN's "Paula Zahn Now."
Zahn was trying mightily to get the students to criticize the response of campus police and administrators because of the now infamous two-hour delay between the first two shootings and any notification of students.
Speaking with Jamal Albarghouti, the Palestinian student who took the much-viewed video cellphone footage of police approaching Norris Hall while the sound of shot after shot rang out, Zahn asked, "So, Jamal, how outraged are students tonight that almost two hours and 20 minutes passed from the first shooting where police now admit tonight they thought it was contained, they thought it was a domestic disturbance, they actually were questioning someone they thought was potentially involved in the dorm shooting when the Norris shooting came down?"
Albarghouti admitted some students were angry, but said, "Personally I think the Virginia Tech police did a good job. Unfortunately, many people have died. It's really easy to come after the accident and say, we should have done something."
So Zahn tried again with another student, Brendan Quirk.
"I guess what I understand from talking to you, who witnessed this carnage, is that the shock in some cases is turning to anger. And a lot of students and their parents are outraged that the campus didn't go into a lock-down mode after the first shooting, earlier in the morning. Almost two hours and 20 minutes before the second shootings."
Quirk didn't give Zahn what she was looking for either. "I can't speak for other people, but right now, I can't see myself getting too mad at anybody else except for the perpetrator, the gunman. I can't put blame on anybody except him."
He said the timing of the warning e-mail was "unfortunate."
Zahn kept at him: "So are you willing to say tonight that this might have been prevented if the communications were better, at least the second tragedy?"
Quirk may not have been willing to say it, at least without prompting, but Zahn clearly was.
Not to pick on CNN, but Larry King had the second most ludicrous question of the day, asked of Roanoke Times reporter Greg Esposito. After a couple of quick questions, King hit Esposito with this: "How do you explain it to yourself?"
My response to that stupid question wouldn't be printable. Esposito looked a little nonplussed, but acquitted himself well. "I don't think there is a real explanation. It's -- it's a really sad event, and I'm going to be writing a lot of sad stories over the next several months. And I -- I really don't think there is an explanation right now."
Again, I understand the compulsion, even the necessity, to offer continuous coverage of stories like this. As Robert Bianco of USA Today wrote, "By eschewing entertainment, just as by sending anchors on location, [networks] confer another level of legitimacy on an event, marking it as one we're all expected to share."
But dead air -- call it a moment of silence if that helps -- would be preferable to some of the inevitable inanity of the attempt.
Radmacher is the editorial page editor of The Roanoke Times.
