COM 150: Branding, NBC News and a mass murderer

A very thought-provoking piece in today's Chicago Tribune by media columnist Phil Rosenthal. I think he's overstating the case a little, but here's what he says about NBC's airing of the video of the Virginia Tech slayer who shot 30 people to death this week:

NEW YORK -- So now when the world thinks of Virginia Tech gunman Cho Seung Hui, armed and glaring at the camera, forever embedded in the gruesome memory will be the NBC News logo.

Complete with the NBC peacock, in all its multicolored glory.

I'm not sure the American public has that great an attention span. But Rosenthal has a legitimate case to make. Here's his case:

While NBC News on Thursday withstood a furious backlash from viewers incensed that it would give a platform to a mass murderer, others in journalism circles say they, too, would have presented some of the same materials if Cho had sent his package to them. Accordingly, Cho's video and images ran elsewhere on the air and cable, in print and on the Internet.

But at NBC's request, the rantings and Travis Bickle poses of Cho's "multimedia manifesto," as "NBC Nightly News" anchor Brian Williams dubbed it Wednesday, had NBC's logo slapped on them. On other networks, it was Cho and NBC News. On cable, it was Cho and NBC News. On the front page of The New York Times, it was Cho and NBC News.

What an odd thing to want to have associated with one's brand.

And that's why I'm posting Rosenthal's story to the blog for COMM 150. The issues raised by broadcasting the video have been ably discussed elsewhere. But Rosenthal raises the issue of branding.

Was it good brand management for NBC News to slap its logo on the segments it released to other media?

I don't know. (Although I think if it were me, I would ask the other nets to use the logo and hope they had the good taste to pull the image when it crossed a line between news and gee-whiz graphic arts.) It's a hard call to make.

Here's how the networks -- including NBC's anchor Williams -- reacted to the controversy over airing the video. Followed by Rosenthal's reaction to their reaction.

All three network newscasts Thursday night prominently reported the backlash against coverage of the Cho video that they all had aired the night before. But, by midday Thursday, NBC and the others had begun judiciously scaling back their use of the material.

John Moody, Fox News Channel executive vice president for editorial, for example, issued a statement saying there was "no reason to continue assaulting the public with these disturbing and demented images," but he also reserved the right to run the footage again if events warranted.

"It was a new and newsworthy element of the biggest story of the day, the week and, I hope, month," Moody said in an interview. "I think it was legitimate to run it for a while, while it added new information to the story."

And CBS News boss Sean McManus said it would have been unsound journalistically not to air the video excerpts initially, but his network intended to back off in a hurry.

"The news organizations have an obligation to do it, but also have an obligation to be sensitive to what it does to the victims' families," he said. "The one thing that I do think is important is to not overuse it. … We're not going to air it unless it's absolutely necessary to advance the story."

Williams, in his Thursday blog, said he understood why people might be upset with NBC News.

And in truth, NBC is no more responsible than any other media outlet that carried Cho's video and pictures. But putting its peacock on those images binds the messenger to the message.

I still don't know. You decide.