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Vester Flanagan Has Made Witnesses Of Us All

Vester Flanagan Has Made Witnesses Of Us All

“I’ve seen enough. I don’t want to see any more” — Bruce Springsteen, “Cover Me”

When terrorists beheaded Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002 and posted video of the killing online, I refused to look. I explained my reasoning in this space. To watch that video, I wrote, knowing it was staged specifically to fill me with revulsion and fear, would feel like cooperating with the monsters who killed him. It would make me an accomplice.

I didn’t want to see. I didn’t want that blood on my soul.

Not long after that column appeared, I did see Pearl die. The video of his killing showed up in my inbox, sent by a stranger. Before I even knew what was going on, a terrorist was on my computer screen holding up the head of this 38-year-old husband and expectant father.

And I learned a sobering truth about murder and media in the new millennium. Increasingly, the decision about what we will and will not see is not ours to make. Increasingly, we are at the mercy, not simply of murderous monsters, but also of our own friends, family and colleagues who act as their henchmen, forwarding, retweeting and reposting their grisly misdeeds as casually as neighbors in another age might have shared recipes over the back fence.

If there were ever any doubt about that, what happened last Wednesday morning on live local television in Roanoke, Virginia, just laid them to rest. It wasn’t just that former WDBJ news reporter Vester Lee Flanagan II shot and killed two former colleagues — news reporter Alison Parker and cameraman Adam Ward — as they interviewed local official Vicki Gardner, who was wounded but is expected to survive.

Wretched as it was, that kind of event is ordinary in America, the fabric of any given Wednesday. But Flanagan, who committed suicide as police closed in on him hours later, went well beyond the wretched ordinary. He filmed the murder with his cellphone, tweeted about it, posted the video on Facebook. For good measure, he faxed his manifesto to ABC News; it is said to be a 23-page rant in which Flanagan, who was black and gay, blames racism, homophobia, the Charleston massacre and micromanaging former bosses for sending him over the edge. He also expresses his dislike for whites, Latinos and blacks, and his admiration for the mass killers who shot up Columbine High and Virginia Tech.

In other words, he curated this murder, used tools of social media — and traditional media — to manage it like a PR campaign. In essence, he provided us his press kit. And while that bespeaks a deranged man’s incomprehensible narcissism, it also suggests a canny understanding of his target audience: us.

Indeed, within hours, the video of Flanagan’s atrocity was so ubiquitous online that Ella, one of my colleagues, posted that she was signing off for the day after being ambushed by it. She was, she wrote, just “being silly” with Facebook friends, and the next thing she knew, there was death, live on her screen. “I can’t stop crying. I wasn’t ready… What are we becoming?”

“The world,” wrote William Wordsworth, “is too much with us.” This was in 1806, 200 years before the first tweets and Facebook postings. Yet the poet’s words seem to capture something true about our time, when we live cheek by jowl online, connected to one another in ways he could never have imagined, and some people post murder porn like a new music video, as if it has never occurred to them that not everyone will not want to see this — or can bear to do so.

You’d think you’d have a right to make that decision for yourself. But these days, apparently, that’s no longer your call to make.

This, then, is Vester Flanagan’s perverse triumph. He has made witnesses of us all.

(Leonard Pitts is a columnist for The Miami Herald, 1 Herald Plaza, Miami, Fla., 33132. Readers may contact him via email at lpitts@miamiherald.com.)

Photo: WDBJ reporter Alison Parker (L) is pictured interviewing Vicki Gardner before a gun is fired at her in this still image from video posted to the Facebook account of Bryce Williams, in Moneta, Virginia, August 26, 2015. REUTERS/via Facebook/Handout via Reuters

Social Media Feeds Violent Narcissism Of Alienated Young Men

Social Media Feeds Violent Narcissism Of Alienated Young Men

We watched, so the Virginia shooter got just what he wanted.

We were horrified, sickened, stricken, but still we watched as a deranged gunman fired several shots and murdered two young journalists on live television, wounding their interview subject as well.

Alison Parker, 24, and her cameraman, Adam Ward, 27, were conducting a news report for their Roanoke, Virginia, TV station, interviewing Vicki Gardner, a local chamber of commerce official. It seemed a routine story, a staple of small-city local news broadcasts.

But its ending was anything but routine: A disgruntled former employee of the station came up behind them, paused a few seconds, and then opened fire. (I refuse to use the shooter’s name; he’s had more than enough publicity.)

We watched, so the gunman was gratified.

Psychologists tell us that our violent video age will breed more like him, more angry narcissists hungry for notoriety, for attention, for, well, viewers. In a carefully planned attack, he apparently wore a body camera to capture his savagery; he then uploaded the video to his social media accounts.

Responsible news editors refused to show the most explicit footage, and Facebook and Twitter responded quickly to shut the shooter down.

But the video undoubtedly lives on in the Internet’s murky underworld. This is the modern version of the Roman Colosseum, a 21st-century update of public executions.

And, yet, it was uniquely American, the sort of horror show for which we have developed a worldwide reputation. While social media are in use everywhere — jihadists have used them to publicize their own gruesome executions — only in the United States do we allow madmen easy access to firearms. We have created the perfect conditions for turning places of work, of learning, of worship into shooting galleries, targets for the mentally unstable, the angry and unhinged.

According to a recent study, there are more public mass shootings in the United States than in any other country in the world. (The study, conducted by University of Alabama criminologist Adam Lankford, counts only incidents in which four or more people are killed and excludes gang killings and domestic, or family, episodes. The Virginia shooting, horrific though it was, would not have been counted.)

Between 1966 and 2012, there were 90 mass shootings in the United States. That’s nearly a third of the 292 mass shootings around the world, in a country with only 5 percent of the global population. America’s high rate of gun ownership “appears connected to its high percentage of mass shootings,” Lankford wrote.

Parker’s father, Andy Parker, told CNN that he would fight for stronger firearms regulations, denouncing as “cowards” those politicians who kowtow before the gun lobby. “Look, I’m for the Second Amendment, but there has to be a way to force politicians who are cowards and in the pocket of the NRA to come to grips and have sensible laws so that crazy people can’t get guns,” he said.

He’s right, of course. I admire not only his willingness to speak out, but also his ability to string rational sentences together, given what he and his family are going through.

Still, his crusade is unlikely to bear fruit. He can join the countless other grieving families before him — there are enough to populate a small city — who tried to give meaning to their loss by fighting for sensible firearms regulations. Even the families of the Sandy Hook children — 20 kids and seven adults were killed in an elementary school in Connecticut in 2012 — were unable to budge a Congress in thrall to the National Rifle Association.

The cowardice of Congress was not assuaged by public opinion polls, which show overwhelming support for measures such as broader background checks on gun buyers. But the gun lobby threatens to defeat any person who suggests that individuals shouldn’t have their own shoulder-fired rocket launchers, and, apparently, politicians value livelihood over principle.

So there will be more bloodshed. There will be more angry and alienated young men who find it easy to grab a gun and commit a monstrous crime. And given the Virginia shooter’s creative savagery, there will be more video footage of helpless victims.

We’ll be watching.

(Cynthia Tucker won a Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 2007. She can be reached at cynthia@cynthiatucker.com.)

Photo: A tweet apparently from the shooter of WDBJ7 reporter Alison Parker and cameraman Adam Ward appears to show the shooting during a live broadcast from Bridgewater Plaza, August 26, 2015. Handout via Twitter

‘If I Have To Be The John Walsh Of Gun Control’: Victim’s Father To Become Advocate

‘If I Have To Be The John Walsh Of Gun Control’: Victim’s Father To Become Advocate

The father of a victim in Wednesday’s murder of the local WDBJ7-TV crew in Virginia is quickly emerging as a new spokesman for gun control — saying that he’s determined to see to it that these mass shootings don’t keep happening.

“Alison was our bright, shining light, and it was cruelly extinguished by yet another crazy person with a gun,” Andy Parker, whose 24-year old daughter Alison Parker was killed by a deranged ex-employee at the TV station, said in a statement on Wednesday. “She excelled at everything she did and was loved by everyone she touched. She loved us dearly, and we talked to her every single day. Not hearing her voice again crushes my soul.”

That night, Parker and his late daughter’s fiancé Chris Hurst appeared together on Fox News’ The Kelly File — with host Megyn Kelly grateful and amazed that the two were even able to appear on television under such emotionally fraught circumstances.

While discussing his daughter’s life, and that of her murdered co-worker Adam Ward, Parker proclaimed his new cause:

I’m not gonna let this issue drop. We have got to do something about crazy people getting guns. And the problem that you guys have is — and I know it’s the news business — this is a big story, but next week it ain’t gonna be a story anymore, and everybody’s gonna forget it. But you mark my words, my mission in life — and I talked to the governor [Terry McAuliffe] today. He called me, and he said — and I told him, I said, ‘I’m gonna do something, whatever it takes, to get gun legislation — to shame people, to shame legislators into doing something about closing loopholes in background checks, and making sure crazy people don’t get guns.’ And he said, ‘You go, I’m right there with you.’ So, you know, this is not the last you’ve heard of me. This is something that is Alison’s legacy that I want to make happen.

Parker also appeared Monday morning on CNN’s New Day show, and told Chris Cuomo:

Her life was cut short. She had so much potential, and it’s senseless that her life and Adam’s life were taken by a crazy person with a gun. And if I have to be the John Walsh of gun control — look, I’m for the Second Amendment, but there has to be a way to force politicians that are cowards and in the pockets of the NRA to come to grips, and make sense — have sensible laws so that crazy people can’t get guns. It can’t be that hard. And yet, politicians from the local level, to the state level, to the national level — they sidestep the issue, they kick the can down the road. This can’t happen anymore.

Virginia TV Journalists Killed By Suspect With ‘Powder Keg’ Of Anger

Virginia TV Journalists Killed By Suspect With ‘Powder Keg’ Of Anger

By Gary Robertson

MONETA, Va. (Reuters) — Two television journalists were killed during a live broadcast in Virginia on Wednesday, shot by a suspect who was a former employee of the TV station and who called himself a “powder keg” of anger over what he saw as racial discrimination at work and elsewhere in the United States.

The suspect, 41-year-old Vester Flanagan, shot himself as police pursued him on a Virginia highway hours after the shooting. Flanagan, who was African-American, died later at a hospital, police said.

The journalists who were killed were reporter Alison Parker, 24, and cameraman Adam Ward, 27. Both journalists were white, as is a woman who they were interviewing. The woman was wounded and was in stable condition, a hospital spokesman said.

Social media postings by a person who appeared to be Flanagan indicated the suspect had grievances against the station, CBS affiliate WDBJ7 in Roanoke, Virginia, which let him go two years ago. The person also posted video that appeared to show the attack filmed from the shooter’s vantage point.

Flanagan sent ABC News a 23-page fax about two hours after the shooting, saying his attack was triggered by the June 17 mass shooting at a black church in Charleston, South Carolina, the network said. Nine people were killed, and a white man has been charged in that rampage.

The network cited Flanagan as saying he had suffered racial discrimination, sexual harassment and bullying at work. He had been attacked by black men and white women, and for being a gay black man, he said.

“The church shooting was the tipping point… but my anger has been building steadily,” ABC News cited the fax as saying. “I’ve been a human powder keg for a while… just waiting to go BOOM!”

The on-air shooting occurred at about 6:45 a.m. EDT (1045 GMT) at Bridgewater Plaza, a Smith Mountain Lake recreation site about 200 miles (320 km) southwest of Washington.

The broadcast was abruptly interrupted by the sound of gunshots as Parker and the woman being interviewed, Vicki Gardner, executive director of the Smith Mountain Lake Regional Chamber of Commerce, screamed and ducked for cover.

Hours after the shooting, someone claiming to have filmed it posted video online. The videos were posted to a Twitter account and on Facebook by a man identifying himself as Bryce Williams, which was Flanagan’s on-air name.

The videos were removed shortly afterward. One video clearly showed a handgun as the person filming approached the woman reporter.

The person purporting to be Williams also posted, “I filmed the shooting see Facebook” as well as saying one of the victims had “made racist comments.”

In the fax to ABC News, Flanagan praised shooters who had carried out mass killings at Virginia Tech University in 2007 and at Colorado’s Columbine High School in 1999.

ABC News said Flanagan called the network shortly after 10 a.m. Flanagan said he had shot two people, police were after him and then hung up. ABC News then contacted authorities and turned over the fax, which had arrived about 90 minutes earlier, the network said.

SHOT HIMSELF AS POLICE CLOSED IN

Flanagan shot himself as Virginia State Police were closing in on a rental car on Interstate 66 in Fauquier County, WDBJ7 said. Virginia state police said the suspect refused to stop when spotted by troopers and sped away.

Minutes later, the suspect’s vehicle ran off the road and crashed, police said in a statement, adding the troopers approached the vehicle and found the driver with a gunshot wound. He was taken to Inova Fairfax Hospital near Washington, where he died.

“It’s obvious that this gentleman was disturbed in some way at the way things had transpired at some part of his life,” Overton told a news conference.

“It appears things were spiraling out of control, but we’re still looking into that,” he said. “We still have a lengthy investigation to conduct and that’s our focus as we move forward.”

Flanagan had sued another station where he worked in Florida, alleging he had been discriminated against because he was black.

Flanagan said he was called a “monkey” by a producer in a lawsuit filed in federal court against a Tallahassee station, WTWC, in 2000. He also said a supervisor at the station called black people lazy. The Florida case was settled and dismissed the next year, court records show.

WDBJ7 President and General Manager Jeff Marks said he could not figure out a particular connection between Flanagan and the two dead journalists.

Speaking to CNN about Flanagan, he added, “Do you imagine that everyone who leaves your company under difficult circumstances is going to take aim?”

“Why were they (Parker and Ward) the targets, and not I or somebody else in management?” he said.

The station’s early morning broadcast showed Parker interviewing Gardner about the lake and tourism development in the area. Gunshots erupted, and as Ward fell his camera hit the ground but kept running. An image caught on camera showed what appeared to be a man in dark clothing facing the camera with a weapon in his right hand.

The station described the two dead journalists as an ambitious reporter-and-cameraman team who often produced light and breezy feature stories for the morning program.

“I cannot tell you how much they were loved,” Marks said.

They were both engaged to be married to other people at the station.

A couple living across from the shopping center where the shooting took place said police burst into their apartment and awakened them at gunpoint. Police said they were looking for the shooter, according to the woman, who identified herself only as Annie.

“I moved from Philly (Philadelphia) to get away from that kind of stuff,” she said, adding that she had been in the area a few months.

The White House said the shooting was another example of gun violence that is “becoming all too common.”

White House spokesman Josh Earnest, reflecting frustration that President Barack Obama has expressed over his inability to push through laws to tighten gun laws, told reporters that Congress could pass legislation that would have a “tangible impact on reducing gun violence in this country.”

According to his social media sites, Flanagan attended San Francisco State University. A university spokesman said he graduated in 1995 with a degree in radio and television.

(Reporting by Emily Flitter, Laila Kearney and Barbara Goldberg in New York and Ian Simpson in Washington; Writing by Frances Kerry; Editing by Scott Malone, Jeffrey Benkoe and Lisa Shumaker)

Photo: Vester Lee Flanagan, who was known on-air as Bryce Williams is shown in this handout photo from TV station WDBJ7 obtained by Reuters August 26, 2015. REUTERS/WDBJ7/Handout via Reuters