Looking at a daily newspaper, on the front page I saw a dead man in the street. The picture was obviously related to a story about a traffic accident. I turned the page, feeling sorry for the man whose picture was on the front page.
The newspaper, however, is on sale everywhere and children are sure to see it. At least that particular picture was not as gory as many others that are daily fare in newspapers and on TV.
Still, I have to ask myself, “Why do we have to have such pictures forced on us every day?” Perhaps adults can handle the terrible scenes but what about children?
It has apparently become the norm on the front pages of our newspapers — and on the inside pages as well for that matter — to use pictures of accidents, injuries, massacres and such.
The dominant impression in all of them is the redness of the abundant blood which is invariably present. Bad as that is, we have also apparently developed the habit of either turning the page or looking curiously, without being affected, at the picture.
If we complain of violence in our society, doesn’t the exposure on a daily basis to such brutal scenes make it seem normal? What can we expect from a child who watches TV and sees such things on the news all the time? Some will say that children do not watch the news which may be true.
They still have the freedom in our society to watch unsupervised TV all day long. And surely as they flip through the channels, they are bound to find a news bulletin or a program featuring bloody pictures.
International broadcasting companies have rules about how much blood, death and gore they can show. But of course in our part of the world, we have not heard of any such rules. Or if we have, we have not implemented them.
In fact, we are becoming a source for others. In one TV program, the presenter asked the audience to give their opinions of a picture of a dead singer which had been taken only minutes after she was murdered by her husband.
Calls came in and people gave varying opinions on why they wanted or did not want to see that particular picture on the program.
The interesting part came when one woman caller objected to the use of the picture and said it was not fair to the dead woman and not right to show pictures of this sort on a family program.
The presenter smiled and said” This picture has been on the front page of an Arabic newspaper, and no one complained.” Perhaps.
What newspapers aim to do of course is to sell as many copies as possible and make as much profit. In the process, they don’t give much thought to the effect on a child’s mind of a bloody picture of a murdered woman.
