Another Clockwork Orange?

I watched Clockwork Orange for the first time this week.

Not really knowing what to expect except perhaps a film full of gratuitous violence,I was surprised in what I saw.

After all Kubrick had pulled the film not long after launch fearing that the violence in it would be imitated and vowed that it would never be shown again in his lifetime.

Yes there were some particularly disturbing scenes in it but they seemed out of context to the main thread of the film.

On Wednesday American broadcaster NBC decided to show footage of the a video made by the Virginia Tech killer in the midst of his killing spree.Broadcasters around the world picked up on the feed and showed "edited highlights".Was this the right thing to do?

Lets start from the point of view of NBC.They had acquired the footage,the story was top billing around the world,people were asking all sorts of questions as to why this had happened and here they had a exclusive.

It must have been a difficult decision whether or not to broadcast,balancing the sensitivities of the victims against a major media scoop.They went ahead no doubt after much soul searching.

I wander if you had been in that same position,would you have not made the same decision.

Peter Horrock writing on the BBC editors blog says that if he had received the video,he would have weighed up the pros and cons,the feelings of the relatives of the victims would have been balanced as well as speaking to the police.

Back to the Clockwork Orange debate and does the showing of violence lead to more violence.We dont really know the answer to that except to say that if it does then so much violence has already been shown that the damage has probably been done.

Was this video any different to the suicide bombers last will and testaments?

What it did was to at least go some of the way to explaining what lay behind this awful tragedy and how perhaps no procedure can prevent someone with a mind full of hate carrying out atrocities.


Away from the media debate,I liked this comment in the Telegraph by Andrew Marr

"One of the endless problems of journalism is the awful, big event which is basically resistant to analysis, as in the Virginia university massacre. Rightly, any newspaper or TV organisation thinks it should show respect, and "proper news values", by describing the killings and the killer at some length. But it's also one of those stories which, frankly, tells us absolutely nothing about the human condition we did not already know, and has nothing to say about life here in Britain."

Virginia Tech update

A good post about the Virginia Tech shooting written by Jason Linton

A photo taken on a cellphone during the July 2005 attacks on the London Underground became one of the iconic images of the event--normally indicative of the limitations of the technology, its hazy, grainy wobble spoke volumes about the chaos and uncertainty of that day. It marked somethine of a watershed moment as well. Like never before, the immediacy and availability of content captured by non-traditional media sources had reached a certain primacy, not replacing traditional media sources, but enhancing those accounts considerably. In the aftermath of yesterday's tragedy at Virginia Tech, important details, jarring images, and on-the-ground accounts were provided by bloggers and cell-phone slingers, even as other online services helped a community steel themselves collectively.

Meanwhile over at Cybersoc.com,Robin Hamman debates journalists use of bloggers as a source of the story,especially under the conditions in which they were writing

"I wasn't the only person working for a news agency who yesterday turned to the blogs to find stories. In fact, an astonishing number of journalists tried to make contact with the author of the post by commenting on it."

Understandably some journalists were reluctant to use the information coming out of the blogs without getting independent verification whilst others seemed to jump at the chance to use this feed.

When you read some of the blogs such as this one you cannot help but get embroiled in emotion but as a journalist one has to stand back and try to take an objective view of the events.

The story here will once again develop into questions about the easy access to guns in the States and how yet again this has led to a shooting tragedy.

Blogging the Virginia Tech shooting.

Thank you to Kristine Lowe and the Times Online comment section for these leads on updates of the Virginia Tech shootings.


The power of bloggers is bringing news first hand to the public is being illustrated very well on Robin Hamman's site.

And check out Planetblacksburg for the latest news.

This shows the power of blogging and the role of the individual as a part of the journalistic process.However as Robin points out it can be difficult to verify the output and there are moralistic concerns as to whether people should be blogging at this time.