When information moves too fast people can get hurt

Monday night mass confusion and fear spread across Virginia Tech and many college campuses. Virginia Tech students and others across the country searched for answers that may or may not actually be there. Some students stumbled across Wayne Chiang's personal Web site. It seemed too obvious for those looking for answers to believe the lone gunman could be anyone else.

Police reports said the shooter responsible for the Virginia Tech massacre was an asian male, college aged and possibly had a recent breakup with his girlfriend. Wayne Chiang fit the profile: He is a Virginia Tech student, asian, recently broke up with his girlfriend and lives in the dorm the first shooting occurred. He also has made it public that he likes and collects guns through his Facebook account. This evidence alone had given the public enough reason to name Chiang the person responsible.

According to his site, Chiang claimed he had received numerous death threats via Facebook. Thus acknowledging the mass chaos that ensued once Web users realized he fit the police description.

"Also, there seems to be some confusion with the issue of death threats. There have been a number of individuals sending messages on Facebook," Chiang wrote Monday night. "I suppose they didn't even bother making the messages anonymous... All threatening messages in nature are being handled by the police."

I find it amazing that within 14 hours after the massacre happened, people had found his site and left 241 comments regarding their thoughts on him and his blog. Most already making their conclusions that he was responsible for the 32 deaths.

At approximately 8:30 Tuesday morning - just under 24 hours after the shooting had stopped - police named the person they believe is responsible. His name is Cho Seung-hui - who is a Korean male, 23-years old and attended Virginia Tech.

It would not have been appropriate for the police to name Cho their main suspect prematurely. It was not appropriate and even dangerous for students and other citizens to accuse Chiang of a horrible crime that he did not commit. There are reasons that police and journalists withhold information from the public. They don't want to jump to conclusions and accuse innocent people.

This is a problem that future and present citizen journalists have - wrong information can become fact.

Now you don't have to wait until the next morning's newspaper or the 10 p.m. newscast to get your information. However, those who do search the Web, need to make sure they're receiving information from a credible source. Regardless of how obvious the signs may seem to be.