NBC is recieving a lot of flack since it chose to publish portions of the Cho Seung-Hui manifesto. The people who are criticizing NBC are wrong and Kossaks ought to be concerned. Here is why.
The murders at Virginia Tech reveals much about the American zeitgeist. Easy access to guns, lack of mental health care services, racism, an obscured class system all contributed to this event. The tapes and writings can reveal key insights into why this individual choose to do this. I am sympathetic to the families but an event like this has implications for the country as a whole. Cho was very ill and needed help. Perhaps an appropriate way to broadcast the manifesto would be make it available on NBC's website.
For some reason Cho picked NBC as the media outlet he wanted to publicize his murders. NBC has a duty to release everything they recieved to the public. Let people make their own judgements about this event. They use public airwaves after all. Why should media executives working for a large coporation have the final say on what should and should not be seen by the public? Who are they to decide what the global public can handle? They did the right thing by publishing parts of the manifesto. Now they need to release all of it.
It is evident, especially in the picture where Cho is brandishing a hammer, that he was in a lot of pain. My heart breaks when I see that photo. If circumstances might have been different, or the health care system in the U.S. was better, he might have been supervised by a doctor and on some medication that would have helped him lead a normal life. His pictures and words say a lot. NBC has done a great service. They deserve our support.