As Pamela has already noted, NBC is coming under fire for its incessant airing of the Virginia Tech killer’s “multimedia manifesto.” I too was critical of the NBC coverage from the beginning, even noting at AoF that NBC seemed so worried about attribution of “their property”, that the photos make it look like the killer works for the network.
But this morning was really the last straw. This wasn’t Cho-related, it was Matt Lauer and the Today Show running lurid, vulgar, profanity-laced snippets of a phone call the actor Alec Baldwin made to his daughter’s cell phone, as obtained by the website TMZ.
Lauer offered up some lame explanation of “public service” and how he and NBC hoped we could “all learn” something from this, but how any of it was public service was beyond me. Custody battles, no matter whether the parents are Hollywood stars or not, are none of the media’s business (nor us, the public, for that matter). And while Baldwins’s screed is disturbing, Lauer and the doofus who runs TMZ trying to defend their airing of the tape as “public service” was even more gross.
Ironically, the clip seems to be missing from the Today Show archives, but my question is who runs this kind of vulgarity at 7:50am, when millions of parents are trying to get their kids out the door to school (and mine were mortified, I might add)?
I love Keith Olbermann and the rest of the crew on MSNBC, but my official boycott of all things NBC realted starts now.
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Todd
I am with you on this one. NBC is done in my book. I’ve had it up to here with NBC.
Yesterday, I changed my opening page on my browser from MSNBC after waking to find the photos of Cho still on the front page. After their public decision to fire Imus for his racist remarks, their 24/7 glorifying of a mass murderer makes the Imus situation look like a joke. I’m all for a public boycott of NBC and MSNBC.
[...] not legally, that you had the right to copy and release that evidence. Democratic Daily is more ticked at Alec Baldwin phone call, but also at the Cho videos and the NBC logo plastered all over the [...]