To any of the satellites which form the global web of communications it makes no difference whether the television signals sent from one side of the world to the other show the most horrific pictures of massacre in Rwanda or the colourful frenzy of a carnival in Rio. The geography and the technical operations are the same. And terrible events do not just happen abroad–as many of the reporters who went to Dunblane will remind us.
Like doctors, television professionals–reporters, picture editors, and camera crews–come across violence, death and human suffering as part of their daily routine in troubled areas. Then they go home one day and mow the lawn. Like doctors, they need to be immune to it all. If not, they cannot function effectively. Immune does not mean they are not affected. Experienced correspondents will explain that the more terrible things they witness, the more determined they are that the world should know, and should do something about it. That is the reason, as mentioned earlier, that many governments build the reaction of audiences into their foreign policy.
The viewer at home rarely has any inkling of the emotions of those involved in deciding how much of a cruel world can be shown, or of the decisions required to show the truth about what people do to one another, or what nature does, and yet avoid drifting into distasteful voyeurism.
In some situations the presence of you and your camera crew can inflame passions and lead to events which would not have occurred had you not been there to witness them. At all times be alive to the potential for manipulation, and avoid recording acts of violence that you suspect may be being staged for you. If in any doubt keep the camera out of sight.
When you do witness violent scenes, don’t believe you are acting responsibily by including them in your coverage and expecting senior colleagues to decide whether to edit them out. You must judge for yourself whether they add to or subtract from the strength of your report.
Avoid lingering close-ups of pools of blood, bits of bodies, or whole bodies identifiable to relatives. Long shots can be just as effective.
Take account of who will be watching and when. Children or people viewing alone can easily be upset.
Let none of these difficulties make you forget your responsibility for fair, honest reporting. Weigh that against the risk of offending the substantial lobby of opinion which would rather be left safely in ignorance of anything which is unsavoury or violent. These people have as much right to be considered as those who are voyeuristic or those who, out of genuine concern for their fellow humans, wish to be told the unsanitised truth, however much it hurts.
The Broadcasting Standards Council, concerned about the portrayal of violence and sex, as well as standards and decency on television and radio, was set up by the government in Britain in 1988. A draft code was published in 1989, and updated and amended in 1994. The sections on violence in news are reproduced here.
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Violence in News & Current Affairs |
1. News Bulletins
(a) The Raw Material: Television |
Modern communications make it possible for News bulletins to reflect almost instantly events taking place anywhere in the world. For some years, the raw material of coverage has been reaching newsrooms in abundance. Complete items packaged at distant locations can be fed directly into bulletins as they are transmitted. Unified editorial control over News services is becoming increasingly difficult as fresh sources of news proliferate and the hours of News broadcasting increase, putting standards at risk. All-day News Services relying on a rotating sequence of items, some repeated many times in succeeding cycles, can raise questions of suitability as they pass through various phases of the television day. The increasing availability of amateur videos is providing another source of material where careful editorial decisions are called for, balancing the immediacy of the material with its suitability for transmission at one time of the day or another. Broadcasting managements should therefore take special care to ensure that those exercising editorial judgements are aware of the principles which should underlie them. |
| (b) Pictorial Coverage: Television |
For the majority of people in Britain, the only acquaintance with real-life violence continues to be through the media, especially televisiOn. It is the media which brings them news, for example, of motorway crashes in Britain or civil wars in the former Soviet Union. It is not the business of the broadcasters to falsify the picture of a world in which there is so much violence and brutality. But in avoiding that trap, programmes should not fall into another, that of leaving the audience with an unjustified exaggeration of any real threat to its own physical or mental security. For example, as noted earlier, people worried about the consequences of venturing out· of-doors at night may develop an unreasoning fear about the real risks of doing so. The choice of words is a matter for the greatest care if the pictures which accompany them are to be put into perspective. |
| (c) Degrees of Explicitness: Television |
Where scenes of violence are necessarily included in television bulletins, the fact that violence has bloody consequences should not be glossed over. However, it is not for the broadcaster to impose a moral judgement on the audience and care should be taken not to linger on the casualties nor on the bloody evidence of violence. What is warrantable will vary from instance to instance. Decency suggests that people should be permitted to die in privacy and only in the rarest circumstances should broadcasting dwell on the moment of death itself. The repetition in subsequent broadcasts of certain such incidents, should be very restricted and their relevance in a new context carefully assessed. Programme makers should have in mind that distress can often be caused to survivors or the relatives of victims when coverage of earlier disasters or serious incidents is used, almost by definition without the possibility of a warning, to illustrate current news-stories. Both the memory and the dignity of the victim may be harmed in this way. Finally, while telling the truth about an incident is the reporter's task, driving home the truth is usually something better left for the audience to do for itself. |
| (d) The Child Audience: Television |
News bulletins are now part of the day-long output of many television services. At some times ofthe day large numbers of children are present in the audience or may be drawn to the screen by the pictures on it. There must continue to be discretion of the kind at present practised by the broadcasters in the choice of scenes at different times of day since images may have a disproportionate effect on children in comparison with words, not all of which they may understand. A late-evening bulletin can be justified in carrying a greater degree of explicit violence than a bulletin in the daytime_ The question is not one of concealing the truth, since accompanying words can convey to the older audience facts which, at certain times of the day, may be unacceptable if presented visually. |
| (e) General Considerations: Radio |
Although radio does not face the problems created by pictures for those responsible for television newscoverage, it must still deal with the questions posed by its even greater ability to respond rapidly to news-events and the difficulty of maintaining a perspective on the violence it reports. The choice of language is crucial: a reporter's first words may be decisive in influencing the public's understanding of an event. Where casualties occur, accurate reporting of the details will be equally important. In reporting certain kinds of crime, such as sexual assaults or incidents involving children, the time of transmission must be taken into account and the degree of explicit detail matched to the probable presence of children in the audience. The paragraphs which follow apply equally to radio and television. |
| (f) Violent Crime: Television and Radio |
There are few crimes which are without victims and nothing should be done which encourages the victims of crime to be forgotten. Sexual violence or violence directed at older people or children should be reported with particular sensitivity and an awareness of the time of day at which the bulletin is being transmitted. In cases involving personal grief and shock, research should be carried out and approaches made with discretion. While in some cases the victims of assault may be prepared to be interviewed, the degree of shock which they have recently experienced must be considered and due allowance made for it before the interview goes ahead. Account should also be taken of the stress which an act of recollection may induce, whether close to the event or, since the effects of violent incidents can last for a long time, well after it. This extends to others involved, even if they are not directly participating in the broadcast. |
| (g) Dealing with Violent Criminals: Television and Radio |
In reporting violent crimes, programmes should not glamorise the criminal or his actions. The use of nicknames for violent criminals which may soften their image should be discouraged. The fact that, in fiction, some criminals can be made to cut romantic figures should not blind us to the ugliness of the real thing. At the end of long criminal trials, it is not unusual for News bulletins to devote considerable amounts of time to reviewing the events leading to the prosecution. Such reviews should not present the defendants or their associates as heroic figures or the stuff of legends. The retelling of their stories by criminals or their relatives should not result in personal gain for them. Equally, it is important for the media not to exploit the lives of offenders or their families. Documentaries on prison-life in Britain have become familiar on both radio and television in the past thirty years, exposing the realities of prison-life without emphasis on the personalities of individual prisoners. However, for the past few years, while remaining very difficult in Britain, it has been possible to arrange interviews with named criminals in detention in the United States and other countries, sometimes with a legitimate aim of drawing attention to injustices or with the declared intention of helping the audience to understand the criminal mind better. Both are proper ambitions for broadcasters with a purpose of serving the public interest, but each is capable of being exploited for sensational ends. Programme-makers should state clearly the purpose of the interview and ensure that its presentation is consistent with that purpose. The implications of the possible spread of the practice in Britain should be a matter for careful consideration by the broadcasting authorities. They should take into account the need, before such programmes go ahead and recall times of great suffering and distress, to consult, where it may be practical, with any victims who may have been involved in the crime or with their families. |
| (h) Violence and Mental Health |
Because some forms of human behaviour seem incomprehensible, the assumption may be made that the persons concerned are mentally ill. It is important in reporting some acts of criminal violence not to associate them uncritically with questions about the mental health of their perpetrators. Research undertaken outside the Council suggests that the majority of violent acts carried out by people with problems of mental health are actually directed against themselves. |
| (i) Suicide: Television and Radio |
It should be the rule, to be broken only after clearance at the most senior levels of editorial responsibility, that there should be no detailed demonstration nor description of the means of suicide. This is of particular importance when the means may have some novel aspect to them or be readily copied. There is evidence showing that both imitative suicide-attempts and the presence of curious spectators can be discouraged by a degree of imprecision in the detailing of suicide-locations and, without conflicting with the requirements of truthful reporting, this course might sometimes be adopted. It should be kept in mind that the late evening and early morning are periods when loneliness and isolation are at their most intense for people vulnerable to talk of suicide. |
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© Broadcasting Standards Council |
