The journalism blogosphere is aflutter today with people complaining about NBC News' decision to air of Virginia Tech shooter Cho Seung-Hui's video manifesto aired last night, today and probably for the next several weeks.

Newspapers and media outlets all over the world (this paper included) spend hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions, trying to figure out what readers want to read, hear and see. Many complain that the news is often too negative or that journalists focus only on the bad news like crime and court coverage. At the same time, another group says that news is going soft, too fluffy for their taste.

Any news Web site administrators on the local news level will tell you that crime news always rank high on daily most-viewed lists.

If someone tells you otherwise, they are most likely not telling you the truth. It's why we have news anchors ambushing alleged sexual predators. It's why Hugo sells papers. It's why we drop everything in the wake of a major catastrophe. It tells us a lot about the information valued in our culture about the human condition.

Take today's (April 19) most viewed list from this paper's Web site timesleader.com:

1. Missing man's body is found

2 Cops: Man soaks mom with gas

3 Sergeant arrested in rape

4 County rejects Triple-A agreement

5 Feds: Hazleton

Yikes! Three of the five stories are absolute crime stories; one is a sports story wrapped around county politics and the one is a crime story relating to the subject of illegal immigration. Buried deep on page 5a was a three inch brief about Luzerne County Treasurer Mike Morreale owing more than $1,100 in back taxes and reporter Jerry Lynott's nice story about The Manna House Apartments getting a large government grant.

So are all the marking studies wrong?

Yes and no.

People read bad news and people get madder than hell when you don't report it. They might claim they want to read about the environment or what's going on in their local school district, but crime and bad news still sells. Maybe there is a feeling of moral superiority that comes with saying you dislike bad news. Nobody wants to be a sadist, or to admit that they actually find something macabre interesting.

Are reading and viewing habits the fault of the media? The answer is, sort of yes.

News outlets give their customers a mix of what they want, but try to balance those wants with what readers and viewers need to know. It's a disservice simply to pander.

If NBC News decided to sit on the manifesto and simply hand over the videotapes to the FBI, there would have been an equal amount of outrage.

In the wake of national tragedies, sometimes the biggest heartbreak can come in the form of the endless slew of punditry and speculation that follows.

You have this person trying to tell you what he or she thinks motivated killer. You have someone else who feels music and movies are part of the problem. Then somebody talks about parenting. Then somebody rails that our college campuses aren't secure. Then someone feels gun control is too lax/overly regulated.

Morbid as it may be, the NBC tape does a phenomenal public service in answering one of the most fundamental questions we need answered when things like this shooting rock our news world. It explains what (good) journalists were wondering about from the minute the story broke: “Why?”

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