‘Killer’ Coverage

Media notes on the bizarre twist in the Va. Tech shooter case:

• NYT:

  The package sent by the killer to NBC forced the network to make “tough decisions,” many orchestrated by NBC News prez Steve Capus. It arrived yesterday at NBC headquarters in New York and was almost immediately flagged as suspicious, because it had been mailed from Blacksburg, Va., and bore the return name A. Ishmael. Last night, the anchor of NBC Nightly News, Brian Williams, called the materials a “multimedia manifesto” and said they were mailed by Cho Seung-Hui. NBC security officer, Brian Patton, opened the package, a large-size Express Mail envelope. The package had been intended to arrive in one day, but the address was wrong. Instead of 30 Rockefeller Plaza, it was “30 Rockefeller Ave.,” and the ZIP code was wrong.

• B&C:

  “I certainly want to commend NBC news for what they have done,” said Col. Steven Flaherty, superintendent of the Virginia State Police, at a press conference. “The way they secured this information and they way they handled it with dignity.”

• WaPo: “As broadcast and cable networks appeared ready to step beyond decent boundaries of saturation and repetition yesterday in their coverage, the story suddenly turned shocking new corners — and took on strange new life.”
• CNN/Money: “Old media” sites, like CNN, see Virginia Tech news spike.
• Brian Williams via Daily Nightly blog: It was “a lot of material” to slog through.
• The network is taking heat for airing the killer’s “manifesto,” but the media needs to defend NBC, says an “insider.”
• TVNewser: NBC says it will limit broadcasting the killer’s video to six minutes per hour.
  

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