Violence on the news precedents.

Hi,

My name is Ely, Bulgaria, 4th year university student. I have to do a paper on the following topic "Should braking news show scenes of violence, brutality and especially dead people?" The casus is as follows : Due to the high crime level im my country, showy murders occured with people known to be mafia members. Crime scenes with dead bodies , blood and other such cruel materials were shown on breaking news. Bulgarian Council of Electronic Media took a desicion to ban all televisions from showing violence in news. I want to know if such precedent ever occured in your country? If yes, please describe or send links for me to review. I would appreciate your help with any comment or materials. Thank you very much in advance. Regards, Ely//

Braking News? I suppose that's from KY News.

Sorry...No offence but

1) it would be a type of plagiarism
and
2) do it yourself! You're a 4th year university student so should be able to do research yourself by now! The internet is a powerful tool!

...and also if he is really a 4th Year Uni Student they will not be able to write a decent paper without stringing a decent sentence together

How's your Bulgarian, Stuart?

The only cases which I know of in this country are:-
1. Complaints about distirbing images being shown at the Beslan School Siege. The only other information I can give you on this was that the reporter was Damien Gramatikkus (sp?)
2. There was a complaint about sensitive images beign shown in the aftermath of the London bombings, in particular a live report which caught a view of a man being given open cardiac massage.

As a result, I believe that the BBC broadcast images from similar scenes using a slight time delay, so that anything of this nature can be obscured.

Hope that helps.

Why are you being so nasty? The guy/girl asked a question politely, maybe you could answer politely and tell him/her you don't know.

There hasn't been an incident like that here because broadcasters are generally sensitive to that sort of thing, there's never been the culture of showing bodies on the news that there is in some parts of the world, especially when the pictures are from this country. When the pictures are from abroad, then sometimes they are shown if relevant, but normally in long-shot and in some cases they are pixilated or blurred. Only close-ups I can remember are things like the pictures of Saddam's sons when they were killed. It's very rare, and any violent or disturbing pictures would be preceded by a warning. All this as I say not as a backlash to a particular event, but just the way it's always been.

If there's any particular rules on this sort of thing you'll find them on the Ofcom and BBC websites.

Actually News24 got into trouble on the day of the London bombings for showing intrusive pictures of a seriously injured victim. They later apologized.

A few years ago they also showed a dead football supporter on an incoming picture feed. The persons friends learned he was dead from seeing this picture on the TV

I saw that and the problem was that it was on one of their loops while they were interviewing someone via phone. The poor person kept popping up every 20 seconds having heart massage in the back of an ambulance.

Had it just been once, it would have been OK - it'd have disappeared before you realised what was happening - but the loop thing was too much.

In my opinion, as long as they don't do the above, or show lingering pictures of gruesomeness, I think 24 hour news channels should be able to show anything during breaking news, and just issue a warning before a report. If you're watching the news, you should expect to see what's happening live.

Yes, this is the incident I was refering too, thanks for clearing it up a bit.

I also agree with you, live pictures should be just that, and as long as they are preceeded with "you may find some parts of this broadcast disturbing" there is not a problem.