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Media ambulance chasing Virginia Tech survivors

Published Thursday, April 19, 2007 by seanlmccarthy | E-mail this post

If you're a Virginia Tech student who survived this week's shootings and decide to blog about it, get ready for lots of media requests for interviews. See Exhibit A (Via Gawker). The requests run from bad to worse to obscene. Yes, journalists want to talk to survivors of any tragedy. I once had to talk to the parents of a small child who had died hours earlier, and I felt awkward and intrusive...but at the same time, you have to be sensitive to the grieving process. In some cases, allowing survivors and loved ones of victims to speak can be quite cathartic for them. I learned that, too, while working an obits beat at one paper. In other cases, survivors shouldn't be forced to talk more than they already have -- if they didn't included it in their blog post, they obviously aren't ready to share more. Some of the media covering the Virginia Tech shootings still need to learn some of these lessons.

Labels: media, online