Quote of the Day: NBC's 'editorial' decision

Radio host Hugh Hewitt has minced no words in taking NBC to task for its embarrassing and indefensible decision to broadcast the near-final words of the Virginia Tech murderer. Among the labels Hewitt has used are "shameful" and "repulsive."

Today, he interviewed Minnesota's James Lileks, who is usually a humorist and newspaper columnist. The VT murders offer nothing for humor, of course, and Lileks made a point I hadn't considered, but which makes NBC's "editorial decision" all the more deplorable (emphasis mine):

Our paper this morning, and I love my paper, but when I picked it up off the stoop today, above the fold, banner, was a picture of this idiot with his guns outstretched and a fearsome look on his face, the exact same thing that about 30 people saw before they died, which meant that everybody sort of had to put themselves into that horrible moment. And for a half a second there, I felt a small portion of what they must have felt, and it was, it felt like a violation, and there was no reason to put it there, except, of course, it’s news.

The problem, of course, is that for thousands of people in Blacksburg, Virginia, people who are still sorting through their emotions, it's not news. It's propaganda. But that is increasingly proving no obstacle to the mainstream media.