The media reported disinformation?

Say it isn't so.

This article from CNN talks about a book that covers the myths of the Columbine shooting, and it's right in more ways than one.

Journalist and author Dave Cullen was one of the first to take on what he calls the myths of Columbine. He kept at it for a decade, challenging what the media and law enforcement officials reported.

Someone needed to. He's right in what the public perceives as having happened, but points out that the whole viewpoint is flawed:

Cullen concluded that the killers weren't part of the Trench Coat Mafia, that they weren't bullied by other students and that they didn't target popular jocks, African-Americans or any other group. A school shooting wasn't their initial intent, he said. They wanted to bomb their school in an attack they hoped would make them more infamous than Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.

It takes ten years to get this information out. I'm sure Cullen had a hell of a time just getting attention drawn to his book. Why this wasn't done by reporters years ago is the question of the day.

When media coverage faded, reporters and investigators soon learned that some of the initial reports were wrong. Cullen writes about the misperceptions: "Facts rush in, the fog lifts, an accurate picture solidifies. The public accepts this, but the final portrait is the farthest from the truth."

Typical of the media these days. Funny that none of them made much of an attempt to get the facts straight.

In discussions on the Columbine shooting with many people I have noticed that no one knew that the killers had bombs, and that they tried to use them. It was only after the large bombs that they brought failed to detonate that they started shooting.

Here's the best line from the piece:

"Understanding what happened can help us try to prevent these things from happening again in the future," she said. "If you don't understand history, you are doomed to repeat it."

Sorry dear, but schools and politicians these days don't want to understand history, and have been gleefully repeating it.