Images of Gaddafi's blood-stained corpse have been broadcast and printed on front pages across the world.
Video footage of a little girl being hit by a car and laying dying in the street is being shown on Sky News.
Images of Sadam being hanged were shown across the world.
Was it the right thing to do?
Around 6:30 this evening I was preparing the "apéritive" in the kitchen, kids watching some TV when all of a sudden my eldest daughter comes in asking about a man who was very sick and bloody with a lot of people around him screaming. Then you curse yourself (for not having surveyed) and the TV-channels (for broadcasting that on such an hour) and try to explain to a 7-year old what the war in Libya was about.
Set aside the time of broadcasting; for us adults I think it is admissible to publish the footage. It is a final stage in a war in which we have participated, either directly or by sitting before the TV-set and reading the newspapers. In the end that civil war converged into the hunt for Khaddafi / Ghatafi and Hussein whilst camera-teams and mobile telephones recorded everything newsworthy, including "the finale" with a wounded man dragged from a truck or a condemned man hanged to death.
As for incidents like the one with that little girl: there is no excuse for non-assistance, even for a cameraman. I know of cases where camera-crews and other filming by-standers have been prosecuted and convicted for that reason. As for the (commercial) TV-channels; they broadcast what their spectators (in general)want to see. The only way to change that is to "vote with your channel-dial"; don't watch it anymore.
@ Peter: you know how it is with pornography of any kind: nobody watches it, but strangely enough there's a multi-billion market with according commercial interests ;-)
The problem is that news is a commercial property- whether it be newspaper advertising rates bases on circulations, the prime ad slots around commercial TV news based on viewer figures, or internet unique viewers and page impressions. The bigger the audience the more the revenue.
Disaster and War pornography like sex pornography pulls audiences in our visual rather than written world.
The way we consume media and therefore news has changed radically since the 1950s- shorter sound bites, more explicit images, almost news as entertainment rather than information. Editorialising rather than placing the facts in front of the audience and letting them do the analysis. It's what makes the Financial Times a great newspaper, and The Economist a party political broadcast in print.
Makes us as bad as them for showing it.
Lets face it, there was global uproar when Bin Laden was chucked into the sea with no photos. I think, no matter how these things are played, people will complain. There seems to be a constant need for public outcry on any issue.
The bought media is publishing all this hype, because they want to have something to put out there, instead of having to show the occupy protests, and the preparation for "looking for WMD in Iran.
tout à fait d’accord. there really isn’t any need at all - what sort of images are we feeding our kids of “normal life” or death for that matter. no wonder most societies are going barking mad!!!
I don't agree with it at all and - as an ex-journalist - am revolted by this. And people are surprised that youngsters are becoming more and more violent.
I find the journalists/editors using these scenes sick bloodsuckers. And, YES, it angers me no end.