Imagine Dartmouh senior Alice Mathias's surprise when she clicked on an online video of school shooter Cho Seung-Hui's final statement and had to sit through a 30-second Bank of America ad first.

From the NYT: (TimesSelect article)

I tried to fast forward, but couldn’t. For 30 seconds before Seung-Hui Cho’s violent drama faded in, I was forced to watch a bunch of people saying no to unfair mortgage rates.

I, too, would like to take this opportunity to say no. The deadliest school shooting in our nation’s history should not be a means of making money. For my own sanity, I will suspend logic and believe that money was not a factor in NBC’s decision to fulfill a murderer’s dying wish.

What if the video had been withheld? What would have been lost? Perhaps American audiences would not know the “whole truth” behind Monday’s events.

Truth is one of those noble causes we rightly worship. But along with “the whole truth,” a pretty sick marketplace has been exposed to the world. This marketplace is predicated on violence in American schools.

NBC confirmed Seung-Hui Cho’s own suspicion that all those banks of America out there would profit from the broadcasting of his video. He understood that this is how our country works. That’s why he made and sent the tapes. This norm that he detected must be acknowledged and publicly rejected. If it isn’t, all of those troubled young people out there (whom Cho in his video attempted to rally) will believe that they, too, can have their manifestos broadcast on national television.

Posthumous celebrity must not be promised as an incentive for murder. That’s all I’m saying. I’ve all but given up on gun control.

My guess is that Bank of America would have preferred that their ad not be associated with the Cho video. Most advertisers don't want to be associated with that type of controversial material, fearing it could hurt their brand.

Most news companies don't even attach ads to to such controversial material.

Mathias doesn't say where she found the video* or that if all online publishers who had the video did require viewers to view ads of it.

* At this MSNBC.com page, one can find excerpts of the Cho video, but there is no advertising when one clicks on the links.

I'm a little curious as to why she thinks that "posthumous celebrity must not be promised as an incentive to murder." What a dumb, self-righteous sentence. Is she suggesting that NBC told Cho that if he got his body count up (there were two dead at the time he sent the package -- 30 more plus Cho afterwards), it would publish his "manifesto"?

If one follows her line of thinking, didn't Mathias herself reward Cho simply by clicking on the video, something that would have required a conscious act on her part -- unless she has some type of automaton disorder?

Going further down that road, do we "reward" al Qaeda every time we look at video of the World Trade Centre towers collapsing? Or is it just an important part of human history in the early 21st century?

Should the news media only show images of events that deserve to be "rewarded" and banish all others from the historical record?

On the broader nature of the intersection of advertising and online news, people have generally balked at paying directly for online news content (I've currently got a TimesSelect membership at the annual cost of  US$50 and once had a Salon membership at an annual cost of US$30. CTV.ca* charges $6.95 per month for a subscription to its live video stream of Newsnet).

* Disclosure: I work for a commercial online news website, CTV.ca.

Since news websites require money to operate (and, if they're part of a publicly-traded company, also need to produce a profit) but consumers want the product "for free," that leaves advertising to pay the bills.

This reality seems to outrage Mathias, who will be graduating with a degree in creative writing and film and television this spring.

I presume she plans on spending her career working at PBS. Clearly she would have moral difficulties working in any advertising-supported or commercial medium.

I have no professional association with NBC, but I doubt that when they received the Cho materials, they were high-fiving each other over how much money this would make for the network.

See this earlier post for NBC's side of the story, but they informed law enforcement officials, only broadcast excerpts of the total amount of material received and seemed to generally follow good professional practices.

But in reading Mathias's remarks, she seems to think that it would have been better to suppress the video in its entirety, because to broadcast any is to profit financially and to reward Cho. I would disagree. Like it or not, Cho's statements are an important component of the story.