Professional discussion of coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings

I posted this on another thread, but it might be more at home here.

If anyone really wanted to dig into this story, I would look at a few things:

1. Who comprises a SWAT team in SW VA or in any rural locality? Are they really qualified for something like this?

2. Why couldn't the students secure the doors from the inside? Why did they have to hold them shut themselves?

3. Was the security company outsourced? Did VA Tech save money by outsourcing their campus security?

All of those issues have nothing to do with shutting the campus down or not, but do go back to how safe that campus exactly was after the initial shootings.

 

Okay, since it appears that people just can't grasp this stuff, I'm going to reluctantly respond.

A little Google time shows that Blacksburg has 57 sworn officers. Add in county and campus police and you might get to 100. Of course, probably 20 of those folks were in bed at the time of the incident. Probably 15 more were in situations that didn't allow them to respond immediately.

So we're not talking about an unlimited supply of officers capable of shutting down a campus.

As well, it's unclear whether the university's administrators were in a position to respond immediately. Certainly, it took some time to send the information to the university and then get people communicating to weight the options and decide how to respond.

Meanwhile, there were tons of people going to and fro. People eating breakfast in cafeterias, people smoking Kools outside of the library, people in class, people on morning jogs. We're talking about a city. And they don't shut down an entire city because of what appears to be an isolated shooting.

I keep hearing this stuff about how the university screwed up. But I don't hear any options that are realistic alternatives. There's no way they could have closed all of the roads. And what good does it do to have your 60 officers closing off roads when there's a man with a gun on campus?

It doesn't matter how they responded, people would have been in harm's way regardless. I think they felt that clearing the campus was the best way to find the shooter. So that's what they did.

As for the door to the classroom, it's not rocket science. Almost every classroom door in the country is locked by a key. Unless someone puts a key in the lock and turns it, it won't lock. This isn't your friggin' bathroom door. They can't just let someone walk into a classroom and press a button. They'd be throwing keg parties in the math lab.

 

As a PR pro, I wonder if you had the same thought I did watching the campus top cop fumble through news conferences -- that the Va Tech needed a PR crisis team in a hurry. I don't mean it in a way to say they should figure out how to hush this up, but they needed one because the campus brass clearly was overwhelmed by the whole situation, and needed someone to at least tell them what to expect when they went out for newsers -- especially once the national and international media started showing up.

Then again, you might argue campus police departments aren't equipped to deal with anything more than an illegal keg run. The bigger security issue on most campuses is not what to do when the unthinkable happens, although a good security plan means thinking the unthinkable. It's that most campuses historically have spent more time trying to repress ANY crime reports (yes, they do have to submit reports to the federal government, but they're still kicking and screaming about it) rather than deal with campus security in an effective way, and by that I don't mean turning colleges into virtual prisons.

 

Excellent post.

Here's the other thing. The major bloodshed took place in one of the older buildings on campus, one with small classrooms and, if I remember correctly, bars on the windows on the first floor so people can't break in and steal shit so easily.

And who's to say that if a campus-wide bullhorn alert went out saying "murderer loose on campus!" that the killer wouldn't have then turned to random people on the drillfield, or in Dietrich, or at the library, or in Squires and just started shooting because he was pissed off and was going to go out his way?

I don't think this could have been prevented.

 

I think the Monday morning quarterbacking that is going on is just a by-product of the 24-hour news cycle, the internet age, the cable news age and everything else. That's just reality. It isn't good enough to just put the news on because everyone has to be so cutting edge with their coverage. So we get "experts" and then we have to create controversy so we get "experts" with differing opinions that argue with each other and, if you ask me, with no regard for what's responsible and/or fair, raise all these questions without any or many facts and create a furor and an uprising.

We don't know all the facts, we don't know everything that happened and right now everyone is way too emotional about the situation to start making rational decisions about the university's response, about why it wasn't shut down, about what is right or wrong. People need to just take a step back and reflect before we start firing people and whatnot

 

Matt Lauer sucks.
He was on this morning talking about how he was walking through campus this morning and how students apporached him to ask why he was here. He said It was at that point they the students realized the enormity of the situation.

Yeah Matt, if you're not there it must not be important.

 

He said the same bullshit last night on the Dateline special, ruining an otherwise solid show.

 

Detroit News:

http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070417/NATION/704170400/1020

Virginia reels?
Question -- clueless desk or too clever by half?
Slap? White courtesy phone pls.

 

The cable newsers' recipe for covering disaster:

1. Come up with a logo and a tagline (Massacre at Virginia Tech, etc.)
2. Cue mournful music.
3. Interview the same people who are on the other networks.
4. Interview the same experts over and over throughout the day.

One of the Virginia Tech message boards yesterday had thread after thread from people on campus writing criticizing how the TV reporters were acting as they covered the story.

 

"You're glib, Matt, you're glib."

Anyway, maybe the students wanted to know why NBC sent the host of the morning talk show instead of a real news guy.

 

they demanded to know where meredith and al were.

 

Never ever be surprised by anything th Detroit News does... Some clown copy editor thought it clever....

And that dumbass anchor on CNN yesterday afternoon drove me nuts. She was the sappiest clown I've ever heard. She's talking to a student and said somethig to the effect of "What is the latest officials are telling you, at this hour?" At this hour bothered the piss out of me. It's a catchphrase TV geeks use, but bothered me as she couldnt decide to be a newsie or faux compassionate.