This has not been Keith Olbermann's best week. I have two complaints to lay at his feet today, both of them related to the Virginia Tech killings: 1) His comments about how Americans react to deaths in Iraq vs. deaths in Virginia; and 2) His wall-to-wall coverage of the VT killer's so-called "manifesto".
I'll take these in order below the fold.
Death in America and Death in Iraq
Keith almost got this one right. Almost. I give him credit for raising the question in the first place: Why is the entire country in mourning over 32 deaths in Virginia, but when dozens, or hundreds, of people die violently in Iraq, as happens there every day, we don't seem to have any feelings about that? I also give him credit for coming out and saying that [part of] the responsibility may rest with the media, for its [lack of] coverage of the deaths in Iraq, both US troop deaths and Iraqi civilian deaths.
Where Keith got it wrong was that he spoke of the media as if he isn't a part of it -- an influential part, at that. Where is Keith's coverage of death in Iraq?
Keith and I are members of the same generation. Surely he must remember, as I do, news coverage of the Vietnam War when he and I were young children. I remember most clearly, at the end of the evening news, the names of US casualties scrolling down the screen. I remember that as a nightly ritual. I remember the Vietnam War because it was a part of my life growing up, and it was a part of my life growing up because the media reported on it in a way that they do not report on Iraq. They brought the war into my home, and made me a witness to it.
Today, we don't see the caskets of dead US troops coming off of planes at Dover AFB. We don't see funerals. We see brief reports of suicide bombings in Iraq, and we see brief pictures of the wreckage of the city of Baghdad. We don't, as a rule, see the dead and wounded. We don't, as a rule, see the survivors carrying away their dead and wounded. We don't see the blood. We don't see the grief. We just don't see it, because no one is showing it to us, and those who could talk to us about it, the soldiers who have been there and who are still there, aren't being asked to talk about it. It's as close to a complete abstraction as anything so horrific could be.
Keith could show Iraq to us if he wanted to. Every night, I suffer through the idiotic "Keeping Tabs" and the lame "My producers made me do this" coverage of Michael Jackson and Anna Nicole's baby daddy and Paris Hilton's latest bitchslapfest and -- God help me -- that complete embarrassment of pop "culture" known as American Idol. I manage to avoid American Idol everywhere else in my life, but I get it on Countdown.
Keith could devote that time to Iraq if he so chose. He could devote that time to bringing the Iraq occupation home the way the Vietnam War was brought home when he and I were kids. He could have the moms and dads and husbands and wives of dead US soldiers on his show to talk about the loved ones that they lost over there. There are enough of them that he could have one on every night of the week. He could provide daily or weekly ongoing coverage of the wounded who come home and the struggles they face. He could put a face on the carnage. He could give it a voice, or at least allow others to give it a voice. He does not.
The Manifesto
I realize that there is a lot of blame to go around when it comes to Cho Seung-Hui's manifesto. Both NBC and MSNBC have been giving it wall-to-wall coverage. But, because Keith is the only NBC -- I'm struggling for a word here: Host? Anchor? Commentator? He's not a journalist -- I watch, I'm going to confine my comments to him and his show.
I've been trying to determine, in my own mind and for my own satisfaction, the newsworthiness of the manifesto. I can find none, if I define "newsworthy" narrowly as "events of local, national or international importance". If I broaden my definition to "anything that will garner ratings", however, then I guess it was newsworthy. That's setting the bar about as low as it can go, though.
What struck me as I watched Countdown on Wednesday night was the number of times -- I didn't count, but it happened frequently -- that Olbermann mentioned NBC. As in NBC as being the sole recipient of the manifesto. 'Cho created a manifesto and sent it to NBC.' 'Cho interrupted his killing spree to go to the post office and mail his manifesto to NBC.' And on and on. It seems that NBC -- and MSNBC, and Olbermann -- saw it as a win-win situation: Give the killer the publicity he craved, give NBC the publicity it craves, (hopefully) drive up the ratings. And do it all because it's "newsworthy".
They did this despite knowing, as they must have known, that broadcasting the manifesto would cause a great deal of added pain for thousands of people who were touched by the tragedy at VA Tech. They did it despite advice from someone on Countdown that night that it wasn't a good idea to give mentally disturbed mass killers that kind of publicity, as it could very possibly spark copycats -- advice that seems to have been spot-on, given subsequent events, including at the school where our own mkkendrick works.
Of course people were curious and wanted to know what the manifesto contained. When I heard on Tuesday that Cho had left a letter in his dorm room, I wondered what it said. Never in a million years did I expect I'd hear parts of it read to me, by the author, on my television screen 24 hours later. I never expected my curiosity to be satisfied; that would have been inappropriate. It was inappropriate. I didn't learn anything about the killer that I needed to know; it only confirmed what I already did know, that this was a seriously mentally ill young man. That wasn't news, to me or to anyone else. It was sensationalistic, self-serving tabloid "journalism" at its worst.
For months -- for years -- people here at Daily Kos and elsewhere have been pleading with the mainstream media to do its job, to report the news. We've been pleading with them to report on Iraq. We've been pleading with them to report on Republican corruption in government. We've been pleading with them to report on torture and extraordinary rendition and detainees. We've been pleading with them to report on the environment and climate change. And we've been pleading with them to report on these and other matters fully, with truthfulness, integrity and objectivity. We've been pleading in vain, because apparently all of the above isn't "newsworthy" enough. I'll be the first to admit that Olbermann is less guilty than many; Countdown is one of the closest things we have to a real news program, which is why so many of us watch it so faithfully.
But this week, Countdown was no better than any other "news" program, and worse than many. Keith Olbermann let us down. He let me down.
And I am bitterly disappointed.