Image by birdfarm via FlickrIn yesterdays (7/1/09) papers, the Irish Examiner (P15) and the Irish Daily Star (P5) printed, what is to me, a highly irresponsible photo. It was a photo of a dead Palestinian child buried to its neck in rubble, after an Israeli bomb hit a school.Why was this photo chosen to printed with the story in each paper. This is not something I want to see. If that was featured in a news report, in the link in the newsreader would have warned watchers of images of a disturbing nature. You cannot do this in the news media.
Some would say the papers were right to print the pictures as it brings home the reality of war, but this is not what I want to be seeing on my tea break and lunch break, when I sit down to read the paper at work.
There is also the issue of Children seeing these images. These are not rated papers and therefore can be bought by anyone. I know also that many households leave the paper lying around and therefore can easily be picked up and seen by children. Is it right that parents may have to explain to children and comfort them after seeing images such as this in the paper.
Papers need to be careful with what they put in their papers.
Am I overacting on this? Or do you agree with me?
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Freedom of speech man & a reason why I don't watch the news. It's quite depressing how much of the information presented in the media is negative. I think a lot of folks in society are already desensitized to the point that it probably won't phase them that much. You get a better reaction out of people when you throw it in their faces. To answer your question though, you could have done a better job at censoring the image or at least putting a disclaimer on the outside of the story.
ReplyDeleteTV is one thing, but print media need to be more sensitive of this in my opinion. I know freedom of speech and all that, but still I dont want to see that in my daily paper!
ReplyDeleteOh come on! Just because some people don't want to see these images does not make them irresponsible. No to censorship in all forms of media!
ReplyDeleteso Bryan, you say it is okay to print a picture of a dead child, just to show the brutality of war and in the same way possible scare a young child. This isnt censorship, this is commonsense!
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