PONDERING: What the NBC News President said

Though the Virginia Tech University shooting occurred a little over a month ago, I can't help but share with you something that has sort of "irked" me in regards to how NBC handled the broadcasting about the package they received from the gunman. I highlighted the words that have followed me since watching the interview. I'm trying to make sense of it in my own PR world and I'm trying to really apply it to current news topics. I'd like to find out what you think he means and what it means to you. I'm just sort of having a hard time figuring out why NBC said it was bad PR for them. They received a skyrocketing amount of viewers! Here is an excerpt of the interview that took place on Oprah between Oprah and NBC News President Steve Capus:

When NBC received the gunman's package, NBC News president Steve Capus says his division reacted like many other news organizations would have. "The first thing, of course, your competitive juices kick in," he says. "But then we did something that doesn't always take place in newsrooms. We hit the brake pedal. We stopped. And we didn't even mention to the world that we had this material. We sat on it all day long, and we waited. And we thought about how to handle it and what to do with it. What was appropriate. What not to show."

Steve says the network decided to air what it did after having the head of NBC's policy and standards group and others look at everything and decide what was unusable, such as "over-the-top profanity and incredibly violent images."

At the time of the report, Steve says, the largest unanswered question was "Why?" Steve believes that airing some of the videos helped give the public insight into that question. "This was a videotape that showed somebody on the edge. Somebody who was ready to blow. … To me, this started this dialogue again about what is going on in America. What about the society? What about the pop culture?" Steve says. "Sometimes good journalism is bad public relations. And I'm a father. Brian is. These are very difficult decisions."

If Steve had to make the same decisions again, would he? "I would. Because I believe it was newsworthy and I believe we handled it with as much sensitivity as we possibly could," Steve says. "This is a great discussion. …

Do you think that "Sometimes good journalism is bad public relations?"