Steve Capus doesn't just make the news, he IS the news

I met NBC News President Steve Capus once, while I was an intern at the LA Bureau for NBC News. He's got a surprisingly quiet and modest demeanor for someone who so capably manages such a large number of powerful people, heading up NBC Network News as well as overseeing MSNBC (directly led by Dan Abrams). Despite being the highest-ranking executive in the room, he was definitely the easiest to talk to and the one I was least afraid to introduce myself to.

On to relevant information. I first noticed Steve Capus showing up in the news last week following the Imus scandal, after he fired the morning cable news personality. Today, Capus is again the subject of headlines, after NBC News received correspondence from the shooter at VA Tech, sent just prior to his violent rampage. NBC News is now a part of the investigation, not just doing the investigating.

News about the news and journalists happens all the time (Katie Couric's move to CBS, Bob Woodruff's injury in Iraq, plus all the media analysis seen daily on The Daily Show and Countdown with Keith Olbermann). But it's interesting that NBC News and its leader are in the spotlight for a full two weeks in a row, and both times for something basically out of Capus' control. It'll be interesting to see what befalls NBC News next week.

Strike Two for Fox News?

One of the most unfortunate media debacles over the VA Tech shootings today was the multiple false accusations levied against Wayne Chiang, an Asian-American student at VA Tech who happens to collect guns and lives in the dorm where the first shootings occurred.

I first heard of him perusing Digg this afternoon and one of the newer stories was a link to his Facebook Photo Albums, a few showcasing his gun collection. The Digg entry (likely based off of info on this Digg entry) labeled him as "kinda nuts... is this the Virginia shooter?" I still have yet to find any good video of it, but according to his livejournal (which he's been updating all day, long after the real shooter died), Fox News was putting his pictures and his face all over the airwaves, possibly also accusing him of being responsible for the deaths of 32 people.

I promptly "buried" the Digg story, hoping to push it down in the rankings, labeling it as outright inaccurate. I instinctively knew it couldn't possibly be based on any sound journalism and was most likely nothing more than jumping to conclusions based on stereotypes. Yes, it may be the dream of every citizen journalist (or wannabe citizen journalist) to unearth something shocking and important on the internet like finding the identity of a mass murderer on Facebook (somehow before Facebook rapidly takes down their profile, a la Holly Ashcraft). But that's a hard dream to realize if you're just the average Digg user, especially since most Digg users just keep passing on pages and pages of information without verifying where any of it came from. Because of this, Digg is great for gauging what's being read and what's making its way around the blogosphere, but it is by no means a reliable source of information.

Knowing this, I didn't make too much of a fuss, chalking it up to overreactive Digg users passing along the information as quickly as possible, hoping they'd struck gold and could maybe take some credit for it. That is, until Geraldo Rivera allegedly got into the mix. If I find I've misunderstood the Fox News broadcast about Chiang, I'll recant everything I'm about to say, but for the second time today, I find myself criticizing Fox News' journalistic ethics. First it was the inclusion of Jack Thompson, clearly trying to inject unnecessary controversy into a very sensitive and still raw subject. Now, Rivera, jumping to the same unfounded, stereotype- and rumor-based conclusions as Facebook users with overactive imaginations. Simply put, Fox News has done nothing but degrade its own credibility as a source for actual news as opposed to a national television outlet for rumors, hype and unfounded accusations of a wide variety.

Update: Just a rant: Seriously, people, this is not the guy. Asian+guns does NOT equal murderer. So stop Digging his livejournal and calling him a mass murderer, quit calling into news organizations with tips about this "suspicious" livejournal or xanga blog. It's really starting to annoy me.

Taking lazy journalism too far

The gaming bloggers are angry, and for good reason. Cable news pundit Jack Thompson reportedly appeared on Fox News today, blaming the deadly shooting at Virginia Tech University on violent video games.

Even as I post this, no one publicly knows who did it, why he did it, or if the guy's even actually a student there. But certainly such premature finger-pointing has to be motivated by one of two things (if not both): a) Thompson's will to exploit a tragedy essentially still unfolding for a personal vendetta against violent games, or b) Fox News Channel's decision to try and pick fights and create controversy rather than just report the facts of the matter.

Aside from the inevitable comparisons to other shooting rampages, such as the 1966 incident at the University of Texas at Austin, or the Columbine school shooting, the news media has nothing more to work with than the occasional first-hand account of students and the facts being presented by school and police authorities. The ongoing news media today has been dominated by local news affiliate video updates, press conferences and speeches by the president and various senators and house members, and updates as the death toll increases throughout the day and new details of the case are revealed.

Clearly Fox was either really stretching for content, or intentionally trying to inject some controversy into the story. Probably the latter. There's no way they'd book Thompson, an outspoken activist against violent games, without knowing exactly what he'd say.

We're used to seeing this Nancy Grace-style fishing for controversy (not to say she's the only one - this could provide a good respite from the depressing news of the day) in the days, weeks and even months following any high-profile incident, and maybe the ratings such fights provide are why cable networks perpetuate the habit and the journalists who work there put up with it. But hours after it happens, surely before many parents even know their child has injured or killed? That's crossing a line.

NBC saves face, dumps Imus

Getting into disputes about what is or isn't racist and when someone should or shouldn't be punished for said racism isn't really my thing so I've intentionally avoided discussing the recent Don Imus debacle.

But I think MSNBC is doing the right thing in dropping his radio show simulcast from their morning lineup. And not just because I generally loathe shock jocks and always prefer CNN over MSNBC for my breakfast-time news updates. Rather MSNBC is removing itself from this mess they were inadvertantly drug into. Plenty of pundits and even Barack Obama (today on ABC NewsNow) aren't necessarily blaming NBC, but certainly directing some of their anger towards the Universal-owned news network and looking to MSNBC to fire him.

What so many people are overlooking is the fact that MSNBC has little control over Imus' daily content; although run out of a studio at MSNBC's N.J. headquarters, the show is produced by WFAN, a radio outlet owned by CBS. MSNBC simply airs the video version of the morning broadcast on their channel. It's yet to be seen how many radio stations drop Imus' syndicated version or what WFAN ends up doing with him (although the amount of money they'll lose in licensing fees when NBC quits paying them is probably a good indicator of things to come). But rather than try to explain why they're not really responsible for Imus' bad behavior, MSNBC took the easier and probably most universally-appealing route and just kicked him to the curb.

This all comes on the heels of another morning cable news shakeup - CNN's decision to replace its pair of O'Brien's. (Side note: I have to admit I've been kind of a fan of Soledad O'Brien forever, since she was a correspondent on the discovery channel when I was a kid, and I've loved watching her move up the broadcast ladder up to the Today Show and CNN, I'm very interested to see where she ends up in the future) But MSNBC could take advantage of the changes going on to revamp their AM lineup and reclaim some new viewers from among the disgruntled O'Brien fans and all the new Imus haters out there.

Bill O'Reilly didn't get his danish this morning...

Hilarious? Tragic? Finally a reason for me to say "You go, Geraldo!"? I Post, You Decide.
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