Evil can't live in the light

I am posting this a week later than I intended - needed to let it percolate for a while in my little brain.

Enough people have written about the tragedy at Virginia Tech that I don't need to weigh in with my own predictable opinions (shock, horror, and, unfortunately, a small shameful feeling of "here we go again").

What isn't necessarily front and centre in the news is the debate that's going on about NBC's decision to air the gunman's video, and CBC's (somewhat smug and self-righteous, I have to say) decision not to. "The Current" is on at the moment (no Anna Maria today, alas) and I'm listening to a panel of jounalists argue vociferously with each other over the ethics of NBC's decision.

I think perhaps the CBC affords mainstream media a power it doesn't necessarily have anymore - that is, if NBC hadn't aired the "press package," which was, by the account I'm listening to, full of "ridiculous ranting and raving," no-one would have chosen to watch the footage by other means and potential copycats would remain just that - potential.

Nonsense. The videos would have circulated on YouTube, the stills would have been printed in newspapers, and everyone would be wondering what the media was trying to hide by not airing the footage. One of the questions Avi Lewis asked the panelists was whether it was better that, given that the footage was going to be available somewhere, somehow, it air in a journalistic context rather than in the blank, info-less wasteland of YouTube.

Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. This is precisely what will keep media alive in the coming decades - not getting the scoop, not being exclusive vehicles of information, but providing reputable, credible analysis and context for the pile of facts with which we are steadily bombarded.

I'm also uncomfortable with the media being cast as the emotional watchdogs of society. If we choose not to air things because they might make people uncomfortable, or might have potential negative repercussions, where then do we draw the line? The media's job is to report fact, the truth, what is, for good or evil. The evil - and I do mean evil - side of life must be uncovered, must be highlighted - in no other way are we then able to recognise evil and stop it.

Yes, it's uncomfortable. Yes, evil can beget evil. But the alternative is a lack of reality, and evil allowed to exist and flourish as we conveniently turn the other way.

Evil can't live in the light.