Media Impact

Exactly one week ago today, was the Tuscon, Arizona shooting. Where 19 people were shot, 6 of the 19 died. After remember the Tuscon shooting, I remembered the Virginia Tech Massacre in April of 2007. Where Seung-Hui Cho, a Virginia Tech Senior Undergraduate student killed 32 people, shot 25 others, and later committed suicide. I still remember this event because as a sports fan who watches college football and basketball every Saturday, Virginia Tech has always been considered one of the top football schools in the country.

According to one of Cho's former classmates, the media showing the Columbine High School Massacre seemed to have a great affect on Cho. Cho's former classmate stated that when Cho got an F in his Spanish class, he wrote "F you all" on his binder, referring to Society (http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/story?id=3541157&page=2). Cho sent a package of material to NBC with pictures of himself and several notes, in these notes Cho glorified Eric and Dylan the two shooters at columbine, and it was reported that he wrote a paper in high school stating how Columbine inspired him and he stated he wanted to repeat it (http://articles.latimes.com/2007/aug/31/nation/na-vatech31).

Dr Phil McGraw told Larry King on CNN that he believes Video Games were to blame for Cho's actions at Virginia Tech. Stating that violent video games encourage mass murders, and these video games triggered Cho's emotions, no pun intended (http://n4g.com/news/35531/dr-phil-blames-video-games-for-virginia-tech-massacre).

"The American Chronicle" states that the media's glorification of murders gave Cho a motive, a loner seeking attention (http://n4g.com/news/35531/dr-phil-blames-video-games-for-virginia-tech-massacre).

The New York times wrote an article shortly after the Virginia Tech Massacre, it pointed out that one of Cho's pictures where Cho is wielding a hammer is similar to a 2003 Korean film, "Oldboy". The movie is a Korean adaptation of Romeo and Juliet,  bloody revenge tragedy about a boy who falls in love with a girl. The boy like Cho, is a disturbed outcast. (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/23/movies/23movi.html)