The American Spectator

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BROADCASTING'S BROADSIDES br> Re: Happy Feder's NBC Loses It : /p>

Sunday afternoon, while visiting the Virginia Tech campus, about 50 miles east of here, I chatted with several people. To three young people and the father of VPI students with whom I spoke, more than just NBC "lost it."

One young Blacksburg resident, who knew slain Jarrett Lane, of Narrows, Va., about 20 miles east of here, roundly criticized NBC for airing the Cho video. He said he'd heard that the families of slain students were refusing to speak with the news media, mainly because of that. That's hearsay, I know, but the young fellow made a sound point: Murderer Cho certainly got more than his 15 minutes of fame, over and over and over again. But was much said or has much been said, really, by NBC about the murdered students or faculty?

NBC's excess on Cho but shortage on the victims genuinely troubled this young man. Me, too, for what it's worthâ€"that and the Big Three choosing not to interrupt their escapist Monday night programming to report something genuinely newsworthy, here and globally.

Besides this fellow saying how negatively he and the townies perceived the media had behaved, a man from New Market, Va., who has children and a son-in-law at Tech, pulled no punch. He said the news media have acted like "horses' asses."

One of the man's children, a Virginia Tech graduate who works for the university, told of how offensively intrusive the national TV media has been. Her husband, a Tech senior, added that the news media, particularly national, has been "pesky." With a smile, he and she noted the broadcast media's satellite trucks were banned from campus.

There are some real grab-your-heart, open-your-eyes, human-interest stories in Blacksburg and at Tech that go beyond Cho. These need reporting. They're not the follow-the-reporters'-gaggle type. Sadly, with very few exceptions, the national news media seems not to notice or have the ability to report them. Should they notice, their distance the young Blacksburg fellow also mentioned won't work. They'll need to show some heart, which they can do and still get the stories.

p>Maybe the media doesn't know how to show heart, though. For example, the young lady offered that during Friday's memorial service, she could see only one member of the media, a cameraman, who even had Tech's colors on. That justifiably upset her. Was it too much for all the media representatives there to be Hokies for just a day? br> -- C. Kenna Amos br> Princeton, West Virginia

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