Too much coverage?

[Peri]

I was reading an article in the newspaper about the school siege in Cambodia where the 4 year old was shot dead.  It was absolutely heartbreaking to read. I was wondering what everybody thought of the photos of the dead child being carried out of the school and of that poor father cradling his child.  (Im even finding this hard to type),  Is it going too far showing pictures of the personal suffering or should we watch it to bring the full horror of what these people did home to us.

[jno]

I believe journalists do debate this issue Peri - some more than others, no doubt. Of course you're shocked, so was I - but shouldn't we be? If we lost our capacity to be upset by this sort of behaviour, we'd become cynical  or just unfeeling. So I don't really mind being shown this sort of thing.

Being shown it over and over later on, as andy hughes suggests, is a different matter. But the World Trade Centre attacks were a huge event and I guess just as worthy of repetition as, say, the D-Day landings. I don't think they're repeated to shock us or otherwise arouse any sort of emotional response, but because they've become a kind of instant history; showing them is just explaining what happened.

[Peri]

I know we need to be shocked and horrified but what Im talking about is the personal side of this. Something I know nothing about and hope I never will but i am questioning are we intruding too much on these peoples lives by showing pictures of their dead children like that.  Large photos on newspapers and on the T.V. too I suppose.  I dont know how I would feel in their position.

[webby27]

I agree peri if that had been my child i would not want people to see the image.I for one do not need to see images like this, i feel sick just reading these awful stories, being a parent myself i can only imaging the parents of this child and many alike the pain, greif and anger they must feel.I for one do not like or need to see these pictures to understand the devastation that has happened

[Peri]

Thats exactly what I wanted to say, Webby.  I dont need to see to empathise.

[sunflower68]

Peri I felt after the terribleTsunami of last year that the photos of dead bodies on the beaches were totally shocking and unneccessary.  Especially considering that thousands of family-members were still looking for their loved ones; unsure if they were still alive or not.  Perish the thought they should see somebody they know and love on the cover of a daily paper.

[jno]

In general we only see dead people from faraway places - probably for the very reasons ABers suggest: so readers/viewers don't see anyone they know in their papers or on the screen. Perhaps Asian news media would show more explicit scenes of a European disaster than European media would, for the same reason. I'd think it was intrusive if a picture of me (or my child) appeared in a local newspaper, but I'm not sure I would worry if it appeared in a Tokyo one, for instance.

I'm not disagreeing with you strongly Peri, I'm really not sure what the 'right' thing to do is. But I do think I empathise more with something when see it. Can't speak for other people, though.

[Morrisonker]

I remember watching coverage of the Dunblaine school shooting ages ago and behind the news reporter was a group of parents and a police man reading out the names of the children who had been killed.  You could see one mother screaming in grief and collapse on the ground.  Even though I was only about 7 years old I remember thinking how horrible it was that at the moment this woman's world fell apart she was on camera.  It must have been an intensely personal and private moment and shouldn't have been recorded, much less broadcast on TV.

[Peri]

I wonder is it true that the media show more graphic pictures when the tragedy is far away.  The child who died was Canadian, I would like to know what the coverage was like over there.

[justineo]

It's a really interesting point you have made, Peri.  I cry all the time at news stories and terrible pictures of people's suffering but maybe I'm being too subjective.  Seeing children suffering is unbearable.  I once saw a Michael Buerk documentary from South Africe when he had filmed a young boy's murder by a rival tribe.  He was accused of murdering one of their men and was chased around the shanty town by a huge crowd of boys and men, with machetes and knives.  I don't want to go into detail but the images from that have stayed with me for years.  Michael Buerk did warn people about the content but admitted that he felt compelled to watch it happening. The one thing it showed me was that I was very complacent about my easy life in the UK and how different I might have been if I experienced their way of living.

[littleoldme]

This reminds me of the old Not The Nine O'Clock News sketch where Mel Smith, acting the part of a newsreader, reports on a major plane crash and list the dead by nationality, "in descending order of importance". It was a comic sketch, of course, but I think it made a valid point, that our media portray people from faraway lands as somehow less likely to earn our sympathy, and that showing particularly harrowing images is the only way to get across the true horror of the situation if it's outside Britain, or even Europe.

There may be some truth in this, but the question is are the media reacting to the attitudes, or producing them?