Mickey bashes NBC for showing the Cho video. The charge is that this is a "reward," and a "publicity bonanza" for the killer. Compared to what? Several consecutive days of front-page newspaper stories and wall-to-wall TV coverage about the shootings themselves? I think he got his bonanza anyway! And, fine, so this nut got to do some posthumous incoherent ranting on the airwaves. Maybe it'll help us understand his warped mind (and hopefully identify and stop the next maniac). More troubling to me is how the media rewards mass killers with detailed tick-tock coverage of their slaughters. Do we really need to know who cowered under what desk and what person begged for her life before being shot in the face? That, it seems to me, contributes nothing to anything. It's just violence porn. Update: Mickey responds (scroll down). His argument is that video has a special power--it's "viral" and "permanent," for instance. But how can even a viral video be any more ubiquitous than coverage of the massacre itself? (Or permanent--you can still Google all the gory Columbine details in an instant.) That said, I don't dispute that ranting directly into a camera must have special appeal for psychopaths. But as commenter paffoab explains below (better than I initially did), such statements at least offer some possible insight into the killer's actions. (Why not release a transcript, then? Fine. But that's still disseminating the killer's vainglorious propaganda, no?) --Michael Crowley