Within a few hours of yesterday's horrific events at Virgina Tech, CNN.com had posted video, submitted by a student, capturing some of the gunfire. The video (found here) was shot on a cellphone outside a dormitory and appears to be a police officer shooting at an unseen target. It is shaky, grainy, and entirely inconclusive outside of the situation. However, given the circumstances, it is incredibly jarring.
After viewing the video, I thought to myself, how exactly did CNN get this - and how did it get it so soon after the incident?
The answer was quite simple: They set up a web page (linked prominently on its main site) specifically asking witnesses to send videos, photos and audio.
I am not passing judgment on whether or not CNN, or any other media outlet, should be posting video of this event so soon after it has taken place. But I am questioning these methods.
CNN is not YouTube or MySpace. It is not a web site that is created specifically to encourage users to create their own content. It is a news agency. It is not in the business, nor should it be in the business, of asking (read: begging) witnesses of tragic events to create content for them. Further, they should not be so blatantly abusing the very people providing them with these materials. In small print, CNN notes that users submitting media agree to their terms of use, which includes this particularly exploitative language:
By submitting your material... you hereby grant to CNN.. a non-exclusive, perpetual, worldwide license to edit, telecast, rerun, reproduce, use, syndicate, license, print, sublicense, distribute and otherwise exhibit the materials you submit... without payment to you or any third party... CNN has the right to edit and/or alter any submission.
Boiled-down version of the page: Give us your tragedy. Let us sell it for our benefit and not yours. Read more...
They're not dead... yet!
My name is Andy D, and I am a white rapper. I have written pop songs about love, sex, partying, sex with werewolves, and female ejaculation. I have had a moustache for three years, a rattail for two years, and wear almost exclusively pink shirts emblazoned with air-brushed pictures of kittens and unicorns. I am absurd, and I know it. I am absurd on purpose. What I am not doing is being ironic.
