"The killings appear to have been skillfully engineered for maximum distribution, and to sow maximum dread, over Twitter, Facebook and mobile phones."

"The video Mr. Flanagan shows is an up-close, first-person execution. It was posted only after his social media accounts had become widely known, while the police were in pursuit of the killer. And unlike previous televised deaths, these were not merely broadcast, but widely and virally distributed, playing out with the complicity of thousands, perhaps millions, of social networking users who could not help watching and sharing. The horror was the dawning realization, as the video spread across the networks, that the killer had anticipated the moves — that he had been counting on the mechanics of these services and on our inability to resist passing on what he had posted."

From Farhad Manjoo (at The NYT), "Virginia Shooting Gone Viral, in a Well-Planned Rollout on Social Media."

MEANWHILE: Jim Geraghty at The National Review says:

But I feel like there’s at least one compelling reason to show the video: this is the actual truth of what happened. The job of journalists is to inform the public of what happened. One of our great complaints about modern media is that it feels a paternalistic need to emphasize certain aspects and obscure others, often in service of a particular narrative, no?...

[I]f you choose not to watch the video of today’s murder – or the Charlie Hebdo attack, or any other bloody video, that’s fine. That’s your choice. But let’s not reflexively denounce news organizations that show the ugly truth, in all its unedited horror.