None of these thoughts break new ground; it is simply that the two events, coming so close together, prompt a re-examination of the relationship between media and morality. It cannot be doubted that as television competition has increased everywhere, within countries and between them, so news coverage is a competing branch of entertainment within companies.

News, with its powerful mixture of public interest and what the public is interested in, the combination of public spiritedness and prurience, struggles desperately in the wake of violence packaged as entertainment. Where once we studied explanations of the issues we now absorb vast quantities of actuality without ever really knowing about causes; what started in Vietnam as journalism with a high moral purpose sank to the "Holy Cow!" smart bombs of Baghdad.

As long as there was a public broadcasting ethic - even in commercial companies like NBC, ABC and CBS - it was easy to make a distinction between the solemn anchor man and the brutal cop but the boundary is now extremely porous. The ubiquitous cornucopia of the Internet, lacking any hierarchical attribution such as that associated with public broadcasting, simply makes the problem worse.

In parallel with the 'mushing' of the media and the emergence of violence as a marketable commodity in whatever guise, there has arisen a blurring in the mind of the public between what is real and what is a fantasy; soap opera plots are reported in newspapers as if they were news and public issues are pressed by lobby groups into soap operas.

Much worse, perhaps, watching television and surfing the Internet have become solitary preoccupations.

Gone are the days when half of a nation would watch and then discuss the same series or movie. There is a screen in every room and a fantasy in every heart; and if that fantasy is not shared, is allowed to grow out of proportion, is not subjected to the yardstick of criticism and its proximity to reality, fantasy becomes not an escape but an illusion of reality.

We know this instinctively, we know that culture is not a bar against barbarity; we know that it is often easier to sympathise with a character in a novel than our next door neighbour; heaven knows, I have been more upset by a death in a novel than a death in the family. At the same time, though, my family reserved the right (and even assert the duty) to tease me for my temporary aberrations.

So it is not so far-fetched to warn against the isolated life turning into an unmediated obsession.

It would be trite at this point to try to guess what went through the minds of the murderers at Columbine High, but neither would it take a genius to suggest that programmatic socialisation for teenagers is quite as important as weapons control. The latter is largely a problem for the United States but the former is a problem for the whole of the Western World where preparation for future economic warfare is retro-engineered into the classroom.

Worse still, the political correctness (out of single quotes) practiced for the best of intentions in a multi-cultural society of very differently talented people, has led to an impossible situation when relativity has overcome any notion that experience counts for anything. Just as "may I kindly suggest that you desist from playing with those matches" is hardly an adequate imperative for a toddler, similarly morally neutral language is not much use for teenagers on the verge of destroying themselves and many of their peers along with them.

The paradox is, of course, that the emphasis on employability skills at the expense of social skills has inevitably led to a horrible lacuna of sociability in senior executives which will, in turn, lead to poorer production no matter what the improvement in technical skills.

All that having been said, the core problem is the relationship between human beings and the information they receive and transmit either directly from their fellow humans or through the media. The post modernist, the politically correct, may not wish to discriminate between this and that class of information or meaning; he should not be surprised, then, if the bullet doesn't discriminate either.


Kevin Carey is a writer, broadcaster and social entrepreneur. His interests range from the relationship between information technology and social exclusion and the symphonies of Gustav Mahler. He is the director of a UK charity, HumanITy, which combines rigorous social analysis with experimental field projects on learning IT skills through content creation. Educated at Cambridge and Harvard before a spell at the BBC, followed by 15 years in Third World Development, Carey offers a unique perspective on world affairs. He is a politcal theorist, moral philosopher, classical music critic and published poet.