In the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings, the media has questions. Really stupid questions.
They also have conclusions;
In the strongest editorialized image of the day, German cable news broadcaster NTV flashed an image of the former head of the National Rifle Association, the US gun lobby: In other words, blame rifle-wielding Charlton Heston for the 33 dead.
And, they have “experts”. This one predicts copycat killings – as though the Virginia Tech shooter came up with the plan all on his own.
On CBC’s The National last evening, we learned that school shootings were the result of – wait for it – the Iraq war. How many potential guests did CBC news sift through and reject in order to come up with one willing to conform to that ridiculous script? (If someone can isolate that special bit of insight for Youtube posterity, let me know … Update – No-Libs has it now.)
Another example of pervasive, uncorrected inaccuracy – “This is media malpractice and what many would consider willful deception.”
You can use this thread for other links or observations as to how media is covering this story.
CBC won the A-hole of the week award for using the VT shootings to inundate views with the Canadian school shootings while ignoring a lot of pertainent info coming out of the US. Complete Bolshy mind wash coming from Mothercorpse.
CTV Cable news was surporisingly decent and in particular the gal on the “verdict” segment had US guest experts that were fairly accurate in assigning blame to the school security force and their incredibly inept bungling of the situation. In the Ms. Todd’s editorial opined that the parents should launch a class action suit against VT’s inept police and admin. Kudos CTC Cable news!!
CNN_ same endless on site talking head not telling us anything new or pertenent, just working the story for market share….ditto with MSNBC
FoxNews: too much opinion and they gave Camous authorities a free ride…Fox is as biased as CBC in their own way.
The GTA Dailies: G&M/Star…about what you’d expect from media with a partisan loberal agenda…all the trite old gun control talking points trotted out as lefty riolls in the blood of the victims that he creates.
Good write up in the Calgary sun.
Haven’t had time to hut the conservative broadsheets but I’m watching closely to see who joins the culture of victimhood in ascribing blame to everything but the shooter and police inability to provide security.
YOU PEOPLE ARE LAUGHABLE. FROM THE CONTINENTS THAT GAVE US THE FOUR GREATEST MASS MURDERERS IN HISTORY, TAKING EVERYONE’S GUN’S AS THEIR FIRST ACT’S. LOOK AT RUSSIA RIGHT NOW. IF THERE WERE 200 MILLION GUNS IN RUSSIA PUTIN WOULD BE TOAST RIGHT NOW. GARY CONNEAUT LAKE PA.
When is the CBC going to blame global warming on the Iraq war? Or the Iraq war on global warming? Sounds like a job for Neil MacDonald.
Re: “CBC’s The National last evening, we learned that school shootings were the result of – wait for it – the Iraq war. How many potential guests did CBC news sift through and reject in order to come up with one willing to conform to that ridiculous script?”
Just one, if they have a rolodex with Michael Moore disciples.
“in his coverage of the Columbine massacre, Moore totally ignores the killers’ fascination with Nazism ………and instead tries to blame Lockheed-Marietta, the prominent defense contractor. It turns out that Lockheed operates a missile plant in Littleton, Colo., not far from Columbine High, so Moore makes a feeble effort to connect this endeavor with the maniacal slaughter by two teenagers. “
What a load of nonsense!
As an American, I find it offensive that stupid Europeans have any moral highground when it comes to firearms. Blame Charleton Heston
You Europeans have a lot of nerve. Guns do not kill people, people kill people! Of course yo uall have short memories and have forgotten. European society is soooo Enlightened! Yeah right!
Truth be told, it was a foriegner who did this, not an American. Like the rest of the world, it is always easier to blame the Americans and our way or doing things.
You Europeans are fools! American guns were the only thing keeping all of you from either speaking soley German or Russian.
Well, next time you have a war on your land, You are on your own.
Idiots!
Liberals always tend to blame veryone but the crinimals for thees vicous crimes i mean they try to blame McDonalds or Burger King for obesity they try to blame Gord or GM for traffic accedents and now the will blame the NRA or the Gun Makers for this and claim of Bill Clintons gun ban had been extended this would never have happned to liberal wussietards crinimals are never to blame its the inanimate objects and those who make them are to blame that why liberals are such idiots
…rumour is the assailant was an Asian male, in one sense I’m glad he wasn’t an Islamic on a jihad, otherwise we’d see the MSM tripping over themselves conjuring up new word phrases to NOT describe his religious or ethnic background.
My God these Euro-bolshy media hate America! The spew about how Americans have too much freedom resulting in school murders is a bit of a strech even for the most dogmatic lefty.
I have had interest in the gun control issue for quite a while and have followed the Media coverage for quite some time and 2 things in their slant are a pattern…the sensationalizing “if it bleeds, it leads” element of profiting from the gore prevails creating a “monument” the killers seek and inspires copycats…and the propensity to repropagate every demented orthodoxy and “expert” on a “cure”.
The media becomes the play ground for utopians and axe grinding NGOs for several months after a criminal terror attack causing the government to act…most of the time against it’s will or against the advice of its constitutional lawyers and produces some placebo legislating which creates another layer of bureaucracy and, of course, targets the wrong people or cause. Paniced, reactionary legislating to media hysteria has created some of the worst laws on the books.
Again, like the fraudulent science of GW it is the media that create hysteria on false premises and pressure governments into bad/unconstitutional/expensive legislation which proves out to be superfluous in retrospect.
I want everyone to recall that the gun laws the Canadian media screamed for from the Liberals after running a full year of hysterical blather in the wake of the Montreal shootings, was the same law they criticized for being 2000% over budget, and being worthless to stop current criminal misuse and school terror attacks…the Gill shooting at Dawson openly proved the pointlessness of existing regualtory placebos and was a virtual mirror case of the state licencing a madman like they did 18 years ago with LePine which started all the superfluous regulating in the first place.
Now the big media push is to “ban” hanguns or auto-loading handguns….a pointless endeavor as we see this is the weapon of choice for GTA gang bangers and not one of them is registered or procured legitimately. It rings as hollow as “Banning” pot or alcohol…fat chance when there is demand.
I also see the Virginia killer had a .22 rim fire “plinker” and a 9mm Ruger with the serial numbers filed off….so much for procuring them from a source where gun controls are in effect.
This fact was brought out on Fox News last night and I have YET to see it appear in the Canadian mainstream media….they all seem too focused on grinding an editorial partisan bias.
The killer was South Korean. It’s at times like this you will notice the difference between a great nation and a small and backward one.
When a US serviceman is involved in a crime in South Korea, tens of thousands of Koreans hit the streets to burn the US flag.
Today, in the US, his nationality will not matter.
“Gun Control” killed every single one of those victims. They had a RIGHT under the U.S. Constitution to Keep and Bear Arms, but somehow Gun Control in the form of school policy, state and federal laws forbidding defensive firearms to students made sure every last one of them were defenseless and left only to scream and cringe before they were executed.
Had they been able to exercise their Second Amendment Rights unhindered, instead of dying, they would be ALIVE and talking about that crazy South Korean they had to shoot.
The blood of these victims are on the hands of Schumer, Feinstein, Boxer, Kennedy and every other politician that violated their oath to support and defend the Constitution by voting for so-called “Gun Control.”
ctv.ca has the same online poll up as the globeand mail did yesterday . of course they aren’t mentioning that the type of guns the freak used are already “controlled” here . semi-automatic handguns.
I have some sympathy for the TV networks on a story like this. Print media and blogs can just print the facts but the TV networks have to fill hours of broadcast when they really only have two minutes worth of actual information. The filler will inevitably contain a large portion of idiocy and uninformed comment, since they really knew nothing about the killer or what motivated him.
Even moving on and covering the other trivial stories of the day may seem insensitive. So they try to cover the topic but quickly fidn they have nothing useful to say.
Blackadder –
Like I commented last night, having Neil MacDonald report on the US is something akin to having Don Cherry report on European hockey…..
It’s disgusting to see the European reaction to this incident. It seems the European media is all to eager to jump to the conclusion that this is the result of “american culture” and our lax gun laws.
If they had done any research, or had any previous knowledge about gun control and murder in the U.S. they might know that between 1973-1992 gun supplies doubled in the U.S. while homicide rates remained the same.
Also, in my home state of Massachusetts we have strict gun control laws and a low muder rate. Seems like the two should correlate, but in Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire the gun laws are much more lax and there are LOWER HOMICIDE RATES!
So much for blaming it all on guns and culture. Just another opportunity for Europe to senslessley bash Americans, completley missing the point that this was a terrible tragedy.
Now let’s see. The expiration of the assault gun legislation is blamed? A semi automatic pistol (drum roll please) is NOT AN ASSAULT GUN you morons! If the sub-intellectual Eurotrash feels so strongly about handguns, then bloody well stop making so many of them! You have no right to export guns and military death weapon systems all over the world and then comment upon others as though having clean hands. You don’t. You are hypocritical shallow thinking filth.
…two questions remain.
1. What or where was the gunman for two hours between incidents as it is only a 10 minute walk between the two buildings. The university didn’t send out emails or lockdown for another couple of hours, actually by the time it was all over. CYA?
2. Virginia Tech is a ROTC (officer’s training) place, what were all our future military leaders doing? On CNN one picture has a tall ROTC guy talking to a very short ROTC lady, both in ROTC uniforms.
Guess we’ll never know.
Can it happen on the same scale here in Canada? YES.
Will it? I don’t know, but if it does,making Polytehnique look like a Sunday outing,who or what will we blame it on?
BREAKING NEWS: The VT killer was a south Korean national (incapable of buying a firearm in the US or Virginia through lawful channels) who had a .22 rimfire autoloading pistol and Ruger 9MM autoloader both with the serial numbers filed off.
NOW…someone was saying something about “gun control”?
This could never happen Europe the Good, eh?
Teen-Age Gunman Kills Himself and 12 Others in France
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=health&res=990CEFD6143AF936A1575AC0A963958260
Swiss man kills 14
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/september/27/newsid_2539000/2539769.stm
Germany
Steinhaueser walked into the high school he had been expelled from with two weapons and 500 rounds of ammunition. He killed 13 teachers, a police officer and two students, before turning the gun on himself.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/1963777.stm
Scotland
Sixteen small children and one teacher were shot and killed inside of a school gymnasium by a lone gunman in Dunblane, Scotland,
http://www.emergency.com/scotshot.htm
It doesn’t matter if his guns were registered or not. It doesn’t matter where he got the guns. Criminals and mentally ill people intent on killing and using a firearm to do it have no interest in registering their guns, never will. NO amount of gun control will prevent these people from obtaining firearms. Only honest law abiding sane people will register their guns. Sane people who have legally registered their guns sometimes become mentally unstable or insane people who possess legally registered guns. That being the indisputable case, then honestly how will a gun control or even a total firearm ban ever prevent a similar tragedy. Simply answer, it won’t, it can’t. It is an undeniable fact that incidents like this can NEVER and will NEVER be totally preventable. All that can be done is to try and identify potential mentally unstable perpetrators before they act out their fantasy or whatever it is they determined to accomplish. I’m not a shrink but I would dare to say these sort of people exhibit suspicious behavior probably long before they commit the deed. Behaviour that somebody should notice and that should be reported to authorities. Those somebodys could be parents, friends, a teacher as but a few examples. In this case it will almost certainly come to light that somebody did or at least should have noticed something odd about this guy and reported it to a person in authority before it happened. Symtoms that one or more people are today likely wishing they acted upon instead of dismissing it as something other than it might have been for the sake of not wanting to ‘get involved’. The only logical step that can ever hope to reduce (there will never be a total solution or prevention)similar incidents in future is education and security. The plain truth is that although increased vigilance and security will minimize the risk, nothing anyone can do will ever guarantee a similar incident will not occur again in the future. Opportunist special interest groups and politicians running around blaming a lack of gun control will do nothing at all, ever. Google gun control in Great Britain and gun control in Australia and see what an horrifically expensive but more importantly useless and crime increasing process gun control has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt to be. One need not look any further.
Please note that the handgun of choice nowadays is a Belgian made Glock. Correct me if I am wrong on that.
The killer was also Korean import was he not? I think the last Canadian school shooter was an East Indian Asian import or some such.
Killer of 14 at Polytechnique, Marc Lepine was a French Muslim/Canadian. (what a combo!)
The Comlubine boys were white Americans.
All kinds of people are nuts and do nutty stuff. Perhaps the UN should be blamed for this.
We should ban this sort of crime eh? That might work! We should ban crime in general and put those who deviate in …. er …. ah …. jail? yeah, that outta do it.
How does CBC link shootings with Iraq? By using the same mentality they use to call the purchase of tanks an “escalation.”
By using the same mentality they use when they call Israeli reaction to constant rocket attacks and kidnapping “disproporional.”
By using the same mentality to crow on about “gun control,” when it seems clear initially killer used illegal (egad unregistered) weapons.
By using the same mentality that blames these shootings on too much freedom.
Any questions?
Funny how the Europeans don’t remember the mass killing in that school in Scotland some years ago. What lax gun control law caused that to happen?
jvp
A .22 and a 9mm? That is … that’s a shock. Those poor kids must have been trapped like rats in there.
This is some serious evil.
Europeans it was one of your GUNS-GLOCK. You Share the Blame by your faulty reasoning.
Aparently the Eurowenies convienently miss Switzerland’s example. Take a look at the overall crime statistics. Also realize that it is required the every Swiss citizen between the age of 20 and 42 keep a weapon in their posession – and these are not gopher rifles.
A very good friend of mine served his time in the Swiss military (he has Swiss citizenship through his father) and was amazed to see people on the train with fully automatic weapons.
An overview:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/1566715.stm
Ann Coulter was right – the New York Times building should be a terrorist target. Then these commie media dumbasses would start to talk some sense. We can only hope that’s where the next shootout occurs.
“When a US serviceman is involved in a crime in South Korea, tens of thousands of Koreans hit the streets to burn the US flag.”
I think you’re confusing the South with the North.
By the way, did anybody notice CBC’s headline saying that all Canadians were safe in the attack? This morning, it appears one Quebecer is among the dead.
We seem to be at a crossroads of choice. Complete (attempted) disarming of all citizens, which was the situation at VT, or allowing law-abiding responsible adults to defend themselves and their fellow citizens.
There are no perfect solutions, humans being imperfect. But I would much rather see a headline blaring “2 dead in University shootout” than “32 dead in University massacre”.
These are our choices, in a nutshell. Lets make the choice that saves the most innocent lives.
By the way, did anybody notice CBC’s headline saying that all Canadians were safe in the attack? This morning, it appears one Quebecer is among the dead.
That makes us Canadians even safer.
Glock , made in Austria, I guess its alright to sell guns to Americans.
3w.roanoke.com/news/nrv/wb/xp-21770
The Roanoke Times
Wednesday, April 13, 2005
Virginia Tech’s ban on guns may draw legal fire
Some people question whether the university has the authority to ban the carrying of firearms. How about you?
By Kevin Miller
BLACKSBURG – Virginia Tech’s recent action against a student caught carrying a gun to class could draw unwanted attention from groups already angry about firearms restrictions on public college campuses.
University officials confirmed that, earlier this semester, campus police approached a student found to be carrying a concealed handgun to class. The unnamed student was not charged with any crimes because he holds a state-issued permit allowing him to carry a concealed gun.
(…)
Virginia law already prohibits students or visitors from carrying guns onto the grounds of public and private K-12 schools. The state also prohibits concealed weapons in courthouses, places of worship during a service, jails and on any private property where the owner has posted a “no guns” notice. State employees are barred from possessing guns while at work unless needed for their job.
But Virginia code is silent on guns and public colleges. And two bills seeking to give college governing boards the authority to regulate firearms on campus died in committee during this year’s General Assembly session.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
There ya go… can’t blame the state for disarming the VT victims…Virginia is a concealed carry permit state but VT campus admin overrode the right of students to exercise CCW rights…this one rests solely on the sholders of VT admin and their police force.
And still, no media mention of the fact that his girlfriend dumped him. With pics of the fist victim, a black man, murdered in a dorm, and a female killed at the same time. No pics of her. Were they in the same dorm, different rooms, was she the girl that dumped the shooter. Sorry, but until the personal lives of these three are out in the open, the truth will be hidden. Guns will be blamed, not the emotional immaturity of the shooter. Had the shooter lived, some lawyer would be out there defending him. If a student had killed him, that student would be in deep trouble. Dammed if they do and dammed if they don’t. Regardless, somebody goofed big time from the UofV, police and security forces.
Getting back on topic re: MSM interview questions, was I the only person that thought the continuing question “Why wasn’t the campus locked down?” the most inane question of the day. Somebody out there tell me how you “lock down” a campus of over twenty thousand people, and do it in a timely and orchestrated manner. I would bet safe money that any major broadcasting station in either America or Canada would require a time period of roughly fifteen minutes to “lock down” and secure perhaps five hundred people. So to all you MSM people out there please tell me how you would go about “locking down” a campus of twenty thousand, I’m sure the FBI, CIA, DND, RCMP and a host of others would appreciate your expertise on the matter.
Can’t let the opportunity to capitalize on a tragedy escape the grubby clutches of the MSM .Media Money making attention grabbing hyperbole at it’s best ( worst ) all day now and expect more.
Antenor: The “lock down” was in reference to the fact that Campus police realized they were dealing with a rogue gunman on campus and did nothing to block students who lived off campus from coming on campus..essentially endangering their lives as they had no idea where the gunman was at that time except he was on foot…pretty good chance that on a campus this size he was still wandering around.
As the second spate of “executions” started in the engineering building they still had students coming into the campus.
Probably one of the worst dithering unprofessional handlings of a dire criminal situation I have ever seen,,,I hope heads roll and the class actions suit drums these incompetants out of the careers they are so obviously not qualified to have.
Antenor – I’d agree with you; I think that insisting that the VT administration ought to have ‘locked down’ the campus after the first shootings is, at best, ‘Monday morning Quarterbacking’ – as well as pointless in function.
First, there is no way, absolutely no way that the police would know, beforehand, that the dormitory shooting was not an isolated incident and that the, presumably same individual, would continue on to a massacre two hours later.
A comparison would be a shooting in an apartment in a major city. Do the police lock down the entire neighbourhood or city? Of course not – they deal with the apartment. They have no means of ‘foreseeing the future’ to know that two hours later, a massacre could occur.
And, how does one lock down a campus? There were already thousands of students on site, both in dormitories and in classrooms. Preventing more students from entering the campus would not stop a future massacre.
Could the massacre have been prevented? Not by locking down the campus. Not by assuming without any evidence that the individual might go elsewhere (how would you know where?) and begin a massacre.
Not by gun control. Not only was the campus a ‘no-guns’ site, but, there is no way that a state can prevent anyone from, legally or illegally, obtaining a gun.
Only by self-protection during the actual event, as, for example, when the students moved desks to barricade them into their classrooms.
Events happen very quickly – by the time the campus police realized that there was a massacre going on in a building – and got to that building, the damage was done.
So, I don’t see how a violent and vicious action, carried out by a psychotic individual, can be prevented. We don’t and can’t live in a perfect world and can’t control our world to that extent.
WLM, you have to remember that at the point of the discovery of the first shooting, it was still an isolated incident. Campus police probably figured they were at the end of the crime scene timeline, not right at the beginning.
I’m not a police officer myself, but I can’t see anything else they would do other than investigate what they thought was an isolated incident. Is there something else they’re trained to do?
Shooter’s name released…IDed as sole shooter
Virginia Tech officials say a senior English major from South Korea was behind the massacre of at least 30 people locked inside a campus building in the deadliest shooting rampage in modern U-S history.
The Virginia Tech Police Department identified him as 23-year-old Cho Seung-Hui (joh sung hee), from Centreville, Virginia.
Virginia State Police Superintendent Steve Flaherty says there’s
no evidence of an accomplice, but they are “exploring the possibility.”
Flaherty said the victims in the second shooting yesterday, at
Norris Hal were in four different classrooms and a stairwell.
The bloodbath ended with the gunman’s suicide, bringing the death toll from two separate shootings to 33. The first shooting was at a dormitory.
Virginia State Police say ballistics tests show one of the guns found at Norris Hall was used in both shootings.
3w.charlottesvillenewsplex.tv/news/headlines/7063612.html
Eugene said: “WLM, you have to remember that at the point of the discovery of the first shooting, it was still an isolated incident”
That was an unprofessional and deadly presumption.
As for failing to seal off the campus from students coming into a possible crime/active crime scene, this is just plain against police SOP.
GUN CONTROL, GUN CONTROL, GUN CONTROL! ad nauseam…
How about for a switch….
MEDIA CONTROL!
As for failing to seal off the campus from students coming into a possible crime/active crime scene, this is just plain against police SOP.
Oh, come on. The campus is 2,600 acres and has 26,000 students. It’s small city. There was a shooting in a residence at one end of the campus, and then no sign of any further threat when the cops arrived. He went quiet for two hours.
And even if they’d ordered a lockdown – so what? There would still be thousands of unarmed students on the campus and the guy would still have his guns and ammo.
Just face it – security can’t stop a guy like this until they find him and trap him.
“As for failing to seal off the campus from students coming into a possible crime/active crime scene…”
I imagine the dormitory was already sealed off. There wasn’t any reason to consider that the entire campus would also be a crime scene yet, was there?
The gunman could have gone anywhere. Are the police going to seal off every area the gunman could possibly have gone?
They should have known that he’d be hungry to kill again after an hour or so.
Has Kookie Cukier been given her unfettered cbc platform for gun control yet?? Can bet dollars to doughnuts she WILL be on ad infinitum..can’t wait!
don imus – I presume that was a sarcastic remark; it couldn’t have been serious. If serious, please explain exactly how ‘they should have known’ the presumed person (whom they didn’t know) would have killed the first time ‘out of hunger’ and would want to do so in another hour or two, again, ‘out of hunger’. That would require quite a knowledge base – including knowing exactly who the killer was, his motives, his psychological makeup, etc.
And I’m with kevin jaeger and eugene on this – there is no way that the police would know that the first shooting was not an isolated incident. It was not an unprofessional assumption. To assume immediately that one incident would mean a catastrophic next incident is the basis of hysteria and mob-uproar.
Are you seriously suggesting that each and every time a single shooting occurs, that the police must assume that the same individual will necessarily go on to a random massacre? Prove it.
And that to prevent such a future scenario, an entire campus or small city, must be shut down? How? And again – why? And how would it prevent anything?
As we’ve all noted, there were already thousands – got that – thousands of students already on campus. Preventing non-residents from entering would do nothing to stop a massacre of those already on campus.
I don’t see how a psychotic act can be prevented.
It’s disgusting to see the European reaction to this incident. It seems the European media is all to eager to jump to the conclusion that this is the result of “american culture” and our lax gun laws.
Matt since the European culture allowed over 300 to die at a school in Beslan they should also look to what they let happen in the balkans before pointing their blood soaked finger at some foreigner the USA shouldn’t have let in.
Ever notice most of these university shootings are not white male catholics.
Kimveer Gill, Gamil Gharbi,….
The people that want gun control will be the first to demand the shooting of others that do not agree with what they say or do.
Henry Champ is reporting on the shooter, appears he started a fire in a dorm some time ago, no action taken, his writings had been brought to the attention of authorities, no action taken, girls reported being stalked, no action taken. He wrote he was a victim, oppressed, etc. I wonder how much his being a visible minority had to do with no action taken. Can’t be accused of racial profiling, being politically incorrect etc. From now on, when someone does a bad thing, forget where they come from, the color of their skin, sexual orientation or all the other reasons for being afraid to make waves. Take action.
I was just browsing another site” canadian content” a somewhat to the left site. Well,the immoral alex jones,of 9\11 conspiracy fame is linked on this site, and he is speculating that this massacre may have been a black-op by the gov’t. Some pople have no sense or morals,anything to make a buck.Just totally revolting.