Columbine and the End of Journalism: A Daily Blog Series, Part II

The lesson on this Columbine anniversary may not come from the shootings themselves, but rather how the media has covered the shootings since the ten-year anniversary last year.
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The lesson on this Columbine anniversary that hits April 20 may not come from the shootings themselves, but rather, how the media has covered the shootings since the ten-year anniversary last year.

Some Columbine myths, such as Cassie Bernall saying she believed in God before being shot, were quickly disproved. Other "myths" were never myths at all, such as shooter Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold's disdain for virtually all other humans. Some supposed myths are complicated. Harris and Klebold may not have been members of the Trench Coat Mafia. But they wore trench coats; had friends in the clique; and maybe most importantly, identified with the group's rebelliousness.

Yet the ability to grasp subtleties and provide historical context was not evident for many reporters and book reviewers going over Columbine. As they attempted to rewrite the Columbine story on the ten-year anniversary, the subtext was, "We blindly put our faith in the early news reports. Now we are told they were wrong. We are now blindly putting our faith in the latest story we are hearing."

So the first reporters at Columbine were lumped into one category and chastised on the ten-year anniversary for not getting it totally accurate in the first hours, or days. Contemporary armchair journalists - themselves often misinformed - now harangued the rest of their on-the-ground brethren. This was all more perverse because the media seemed to take such glee in the spanking.

Columbine's ten-year anniversary arrived as the business of journalism is crumbling amidst cries about its central role to democracy and a free society. Yet in covering Columbine on the ten-year many major publications fell flat on their face. It's hard to rally round journalism after such instances. Do we really need TIME and Newsweek if they can't get Columbine right? Reporters may have also been blinded by a desire to find some "news" - a new storyline - to add spark to anniversary coverage rather than take a look back. But one story the media might investigate is how, despite our ever-growing databases of knowledge, the public and plenty of journalists still manage to be misinformed.

A key way for reporters to become instant experts on a story is to "check the clips," or what has already been written. Even if the clips have errors, reporters at least have a foundation on what questions to ask and may, wittingly or not, uncover past errors. Maybe it should be no surprise that some of the best Columbine coverage came from reporters who checked more than one source (or any source). That's the good news: Good coverage doesn't require anything fancy or expensive, but rather the tried and true method of being a reporter, checking the clips, and checking the facts. So simple, yet seemingly so tough.

Bloggers, called the grass roots saviors who would correct the biases and shortcomings of the "mainstream media," mostly failed as dramatically as the professional press corps. Do we even expect bloggers to use more than one source and check the clips? If we don't, we should. They seem to think whatever is floating around in their head must be true. They're wrong.

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