Dear Media:
Why the fuck do you insist on printing the horrible details of a person’s death? Is it not bad enough someone was murdered? Do we have to know the details? Do you never think that when you post pictures of a car wreck, that the family of the victim wake up and find it on their front door step?
When I mentioned this to a local reporter they told me it is because it’s what the public wants. I got news for you assholes, I am a member of the public and I do not want that.
Are you responsible journalists or are you just trying to create a fucking feeding frenzy? Please stop pretending that you are not just another tabloid. Have some respect for those who’s lives meant something and should not be reduced to fodder for your fucking sales.
How would you feel if the details of your sister’s rape were published? Or your father’s blanket covered corpse ended up on the front page? Or maybe your daughter’s murder was used as a sound bite so you don’t touch that dial?
Do you ever stop and think that these details make their way into our children’s lives and dreams?
You make me sick. —Disgusted
This article appears in Jun 10-16, 2010.
Bad news is all the news fit for print. People don’t want to see fuzzy, feely good, sugar coated stories…they want the facts, they want reality. Sure, if may not be the best to report, but it sells and that’s all that matters in the end.
I agree with this bitch. I remember a couple summers ago when that girl got run over at Barrington and Sackville, the next day the front page of the transit themed paper had a half page photo of the whole scene with the body still under the vehicle, the road covered in blood, and entrails and such spread across the road! She was a fucking person! Who the fuck wants to see that shit?? That’s the last time I picked up that paper, that’s for sure.
There is no reason NOT to make “sensationalistic shit” news. Anything that could be considered “sensaionalistic” is automatically news because it is “sensationalistic.
You must have seen a different paper, NLGE, because I never saw the same and I’m a regular reader. If it were a picture of a newborn calf nursing you’d be complaining that reporters get paid to do nothing.
Plus citizens have a right to know.
If you don’t like it don’t read the paper or watch the news. At the same time don’t watch offensive movies or television programs or read offensive magazines or comics.
For most journalists Freedom of the Press has come to mean 3 things only. Freedom from criticism for their actions ,freedom from responsibility for their actions and freedom from the consequences of their actions.
I agree with sebastian_! People want the story not the summary.
I was thinking the same thing earlier today OP as I was reading through the Horrid… Facts are one thing – but specific gory details about rape and attempted murder are just feeding the public too much. I have to wonder how numbing it’s becoming for them to have to sensationalize it so that they can sell one more paper, or get one ore viewer to bite.
The reason why I left Journalism school: reporters from the main newspaper in town brought in to talk to the class: “when there’s been a death or murder in Nova Scotia, it’s been a good day [for the paper].”
End of the day it’s like the TV…if you dont like what’s on the screen, then turn it off or turn the channel. It’s a double edge sword. Say if it was someone close to YOU that had something terrible happen to them, say a brutal crime, and they caught the person responsible…would you not want the public to know how much of a piece of shit this person who commited the crime was, and what they had done? I would, and I would be hoping that someone who read the story maybe dished out a little vigilante justice to the prick if they ever saw him/her, be it in jail or on the streets. Everybody has the right to self censor…if you don’t like something, dont read/watch/talk about it. But dont think you have the right to speak or decide for everyone else.
I actually don’t read the news very often for this very reason. But it was a slow day in the office. I’m all for reporting crimes, but the details about a girl being raped with a cucumber? Common, is that really necessary?? Frig that, I’m going back to my bubble…
very well put – Me, Myself, and I.
yeah, that was a little tasteless…
they didn’t really need mention the implement, did they???
would it have been any better were it an actual vibrator or something else?
there is a line… and sometimes they hopscotch right on over it, oblivious to repercussions.
for shame
If it bleeds, it leads….
But in all seriousness, they need to put warnings on some stories. If your kid goes out to pick up the paper in the morning, how do they deal with the images on the front page?
the people have a right no know what happenend. you don’t like it, go live in a communist country.
I usually read news online…never watch it on TV. That way I can at least see the headlines and then decide which stories I am interested in.
Maybe that’s a better option if you don’t want to see more sensitive issues because online media tends to have fewer and smaller photos so you can censor as need be and still get the info you want.
There are actually repoertes who don’t give all the details. My friend works in the hospital where the musician was brought after being attcaked by coyotes in CB. They didn’t give the worst of the details in any news media that I saw.
I was quite horrific and I think my friend actually may have some post traumatic stress from it…yes it was that bad.
Also, people have become desensitized to human suffering. Many people are less likely to react to human torture than animal torture.
You’re not going to change what’s in the media, the only way you can control it is to decide what you choose to watch or read.
If you don’t want to hear the gory details, don’t read it. Otherwise, you’re just proving them right. Idiot.
“the people have a right no know what happenend. you don’t like it, go live in a communist country.”
A well-reasoned, thoughtful contribution, zodiac09. Quite. 😛
What’s so extreme about suggesting that members of the media exercise a little class? You can include all the relevant information from a story, even allude to some of the less savory stuff, without going into gory detail. It’s not always clear how graphic a story is written/presented when you start reading/viewing the broadcast and I can’t unsee or unknow this shit afterwards.
well-said. not that every bitch has to be honest and meaningful, but this one certainly is…
If you can’t tell if a story entitled “Horrific Car Crash on Hwy 101” isn’t gory, well, yeah…
What the hell do you think happens in such instances? A pony farts a rainbow and the person dies?
Well, that’s an easy example, DF, but it doesn’t always work that way, does it? If only ….
Dear O P… I am also one of the members of the ‘public’ & I do want to see blood & gore & guts & veins in my teeth… dead burnt bodies.
So I guess in a democracy the score is now 1 vote for & 1 vote against ~;)
“A pony farts a rainbow” …. that made me laugh.
The evilness of such crimes (rape, murder, etc) is presented to the public to elicit anger and the need for stricter justice.
Images of accidents, etc goes with the “picture is worth a thousand words.” People want to see pictures and then read more if need be.
If you don’t like what you see in the media, then don’t look or listen to it, and spend the remainder of your days watching butterflies flutter, puppies playing, and birds singing.
While that may be true BD, but if we sugar coat the news, we end up with condescending news organizations who would rather shield us from the awful truth like what goes on in a war zone, rather then actually report whats going on. A trade off is that we get awful details of a death.
I know it’s a stretch, but realistically, it’s a slippery slope.
Op, I feel the exact same way. The media makes me sick in this way. So do all the gawker-types that love to stand to the side of other people’s real-life desperate situations (without helping) and watch like it’s prime time entertainment.
new pictures…loverly bd, sebastard…i got nuthin
And for your weekly dose of Bill Hicks:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pK3XRqagGVU
“they need to put warnings on some stories”
If this is about what I think it is, both papers had something along the lines of “This article contains graphic detail” in bold before the article.
I don’t do crime/accident reporting anymore—I used to do it, when I worked for dailies, and hated it.
My biggest problem with it isn’t the gore or whatever, but rather that it presents a skewed view of the world.
We’re actually quite safe– the crime rate is going down, not up, but coverage of crime increases, and so people think crime is worse than it is. That results in all sorts of bad public policy decisions (hiring cops we don’t need, for example, as opposed to investing in, say, youth programs that would have much greater social benefit), and bad social attitudes (kids aren’t allowed to be free out in the world, for fear on nearly non-existent child abduction).
Probably, tho, traffic accidents are *under-covered*, as there actually is a pretty good chance of getting injured/killed in a car accident. I don’t know the figures in Canada, but in the US it’s over 20,000 killed a year– six or seven 9/11s every year.
disgusted, if they didn’t, you would probly be the first one to bitch that fact. gore sells papers, and papers make money, grant you the horrid is not really my idea of a paper. you don’t want gore and shit, then go read a reader’s digress.
News is basically not much different than reality TV. It’s entertainment. Come on, what would you rather see: a boring drawn-out debate in Parliament, half of it translated from French, or BLOOD, GUTS, GORE, EXPLOSIONS and FIRE FIRE FIRE! It’s all very fascinating. Oftentimes brutal and not very important in the grand scheme of things, yes, but pretty fascinating nonetheless.
And I really hate to admit this, but I PARTIALLY agree with Mr. Bousquet that the risk of crime happening to the average person is very, very low. For example I now live in Edmonton, and while there have been quite a few murders here lately that have gotten a bit of publicity and Edmonton is one of the highest crime-rate cities in Canada, most of the crime occurs among certain groups of people mainly “known to police.” I feel perfectly fine walking around here day or night. It helps that I’m not some gangsta involved with drugs.
My problem is that the stories with all the terrible details tend to be about the one or two awful things that happen to a couple of people in our community over the year and yet stories about, say, the thousands of terrible things happening all over the world affecting millions of people don’t get told at all. Or if they do, no one is listening because they’re too busy being afraid of their neighbour.
How about a Page 3 girl – sexisit I know, but hey knockers are nice!!
TTFN DO NOT apply or it would be pages 3 through 5 girl
I just think that there is a way to present the news – without sugar-coating it, without censoring it – that doesn’t deliberately sensationalize a story, seemingly revel in gore, etc. That’s the kind of the news organization I would prefer to support.
I don’t think that finding a middle ground between extremes – in this case, tabloid-style journalism on the one hand vs. a paternalistic approach – necessarily indicates a slippery-slope. It requires sound judgement, respect, and compassion. Look at The Coast: they do a good job of news reporting, IMO.
And re: new pic: thanks, pg. 🙂
If I want all the gory details of a crime, I’ll be sure to attend the trial. I don’t need graphic images to tell me that rape and murder is wrong and its perpetrators must be punished. I don’t want to be spoon-fed guts and gore along with my cereal in the morning. There is difference between wanting to know what is going on–wanting to be warned of danger–and having to spend the next few days in a state of shock or despair.
And avoidance to graphic details cannot be escaped simply by shutting of the television and not reading newspapers. Unless you have the ability to shut off people as well, you cannot help but overhear discussion of what people read or watched on the news recently.