Media and Accountability

[Esckey]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070114/ap_on_re_mi_ea/saddam_mimicry_hangings

CAIRO, Egypt - The boys' deaths — scattered in the United States, in Yemen, in Turkey and elsewhere in seemingly isolated horror — had one thing in common: They hanged themselves after watching televised images of Saddam Hussein's execution.

Officials and relatives say the children appeared to be mimicking the former dictator's Dec. 30 hanging, shown both on a sanitized Iraqi government tape and explicit clandestine videos that popped up on Web sites and some TV channels.

............

"They see how it's done, but they don't think it's horrific, and they're more likely to imitate it," said Hisham Ramy, an associate professor of psychiatry at Ain Shams University in Cairo.

A day after Saddam's execution, a 10-year-old boy in Texas hanged himself from a bunk bed after watching a news report on the execution. Police in the Houston suburb of Webster said the boy, Sergio Pelico, tied a slipknot around his neck while on the bed but had not mean to kill himself.

"I don't think he thought it was real," Julio Gustavo, Sergio's uncle, said afterward. "They showed them putting the noose around his neck and everything. Why show that on TV?"

So is it time for the media to take any sort of accountability or at least some common sense when it comes to putting graphic images on TV and Newspapers?




and if this has already been posted please delete this Mods

 

[warpus]

I don't mean to sound like a coldhearted bastard, but perhaps these genes never belonged in the genepool in the first place.

I was 10 years old once, and I was sure as hell smart enough to realize that having a tight rope around your neck equals BAD.

 

[Stylesjl]

There are things that are considered "Reasonable" this is not. If somebody was stupid enough to hang themselves then i say we take a cold hearted response to it

 

[Atlas14]

I don't mean to sound like a coldhearted bastard, but perhaps these genes never belonged in the genepool in the first place.

I was 10 years old once, and I was sure as hell smart enough to realize that having a tight rope around your neck equals BAD.

You're correct. It is called natural selection.

 

[skadistic]

Wait let me see if I get this right......Kids see the exacusion of Saddam by hanging then hang themselves and die. What were they thinking would happen? I blame the parents for raising such stupid kids. Media has no fault in this at all.

 

[Sidhe]

Wait let me see if I get this right......Kids see the exacusion of Saddam by hanging then hang themselves and die. What were they thinking would happen? I blame the parents for raising such stupid kids. Media has no fault in this at all.

I'd agree, these people are up for the Darwin award, and you can't blame stupidity on the media, idiots will kill themselves off in other ways eventually, it's like trying ot make a correlation between violent movies, there isn't anything that supports the idea. Violent people will watch violent movies, that doesn't mean they become more violent by watching them. They were already f'd up to begin with.

 

[brennan]

Sad but... think of it as evloution in action.

 

[bhsup]

My brother is considering severely restricting his son's internet access after he found out the son watched the hanging video from either google video or youtube. Both site will soon be blocked, and if he tries to get around that to other similiar sites, it'll be pre-approved sites only.

 

[Sidhe]

My brother is considering severely restricting his son's internet access after he found out the son watched the hanging video from either google video or youtube. Both site will soon be blocked, and if he tries to get around that to other similiar sites, it'll be pre-approved sites only.

Oh no doubt kids shouldn't be watching that sort of thing, that goes without saying.

 

[tomsnowman123]

It's a disturbing thing to watch, but you can't start restricting things like this. Accountability is one thing, but I see some parent trying to take this much further.

News should show what they want.

 

[Irish Caesar]

The media is accountable to show us the news, and it's a disgrace that Saddam's actual hanging wasn't available for us to see from legitimate news sources.

Is that the accountability you had in mind?