Don't Shoot the Messenger

Last night’s local news had a piece about some vandals doing something stupid and dangerous. The whole piece was hijacked for an attack on YouTube because the stupid criminals filmed themselves and put it on the web. YouTube was lumped into a "dangerous part of the web" where you shouldn’t go like you wouldn’t go to "the dangerous part of town after dark". I’m not a big YouTube user but the journalist’s trying to peg the blame for an act of stupidity on a web site is just a bit lazy. They too showed the footage the vandals had filmed doesn’t that move them into the bad part of town where you can see nasty things? I wonder if more people watched the footage on the news or on the web.

Vandalism and stupid and dangerous actions happened long before the Internet. Now though stupid criminals film themselves and post it in a public place for everyone to see including the police. This kind of criminal used to be hard to catch. There was little evidence unless they were caught in the act. Now they film the prosecution’s evidence for them. As the old adage goes don’t shoot the messenger.