Michael Buerk chats about Carnage and the Media and says he feels strongly that the public must see real images of the results of violence. He also says that he firmly believes that fictional violence anaesthetizes people against the reality.
It seems to me there is an anomaly here. If fictional violence makes us immune to real violence, then surely repeated exposure to real violence via news reporting will have the same effect.
I have a particular question I want to ask him but there are many hands going up in the auditorium and I don’t get the opportunity until later.
I approach him and ask him if he would mind answering a question I have. I can feel an extraordinary energy from him; the power of his mind. He exudes mental acuity, and it fascinates me how we can sense that. It’s like being next to an engine.
Anyway, I feel very strongly about this particular issue and ask him what he thinks about newspapers printing front page photographs of corpses with their body fluids staining their clothes and pooling on the ground, and dead bodies being shown on television news, both media placed where young children can see them.
He folds his arms tight over his chest, but sees my point immediately. He says that of course televised footage of death and violence should be shown after the 9 o’ clock watershed, adding, ‘If you don’t show such images in order to protect children, then you infantilize the whole population.’
I suggest that the answer is radio, where the facts can be given and the situation described, without the accompanying sensational images. He is not drawn by this suggestion.
Buerk is a passionate believer in showing the public the true horror of war, of terrorism, and of starvation, and he implies that seeing these truths will shake us out of our complacency. I’m not sure. In Britain I do feel there is a strange mismatch between a desire for fictional violence; drama or computer games, and a distaste for real violence.
I am not convinced that fictional violence is always numbing. Our subconscious mind cannot differentiate between what is real and what is not. Fictional violence can therefore make us anxious or even paranoid. It is well recognized that people perceive themselves in danger in such situations as walking home alone, or in isolated places, when the likelihood of being attacked is, in reality, minimal (unless you are a young male, late teens to early twenties, then you should be keeping your wits about you).
Our disgust and abhorrence at REAL corpses and horrifically wounded bomb victims makes us turn away because we are powerless. We cannot stop it; it has already happened. Photojournalism casts us as impotent voyeurs. We feel ineffective, alarmed and frustrated.
We have some power over the televised fictional violence because we have chosen to watch, often knowing that there will be rough stuff, or we can stick to U and PG films. Where computer games are concerned, children have some power when they play such games; they have none when they accidentally see graphic and real violence that they cannot prevent, or suffering that they cannot alleviate.
That sounds as though I think we all have an altruistic gene. I mean that we do not only have ‘fight or flight’ responses, but that our natural urge is either to defend ourselves, help the wounded, or run like hell. With photojournalism we can do none of these things.
I am not a boy and cannot speak for the delight they experience in shooting and killing enemies on screen with a malicious zeal and ease that is startling – until we consider our tribal roots and wonder how we have managed to suppress this instinctive brutality for so long. It does strike a parent oddly having such carnage going on in the living room.
Buerk wants to raise our awareness, and he is right to do so, but my feeling is that journalists and editors need to be scrupulously selective, to make the point that atrocities happen, but not to labour it so that we no longer hear the message.
It seems to me there is an anomaly here. If fictional violence makes us immune to real violence, then surely repeated exposure to real violence via news reporting will have the same effect.
I have a particular question I want to ask him but there are many hands going up in the auditorium and I don’t get the opportunity until later.
I approach him and ask him if he would mind answering a question I have. I can feel an extraordinary energy from him; the power of his mind. He exudes mental acuity, and it fascinates me how we can sense that. It’s like being next to an engine.
Anyway, I feel very strongly about this particular issue and ask him what he thinks about newspapers printing front page photographs of corpses with their body fluids staining their clothes and pooling on the ground, and dead bodies being shown on television news, both media placed where young children can see them.
He folds his arms tight over his chest, but sees my point immediately. He says that of course televised footage of death and violence should be shown after the 9 o’ clock watershed, adding, ‘If you don’t show such images in order to protect children, then you infantilize the whole population.’
I suggest that the answer is radio, where the facts can be given and the situation described, without the accompanying sensational images. He is not drawn by this suggestion.
Buerk is a passionate believer in showing the public the true horror of war, of terrorism, and of starvation, and he implies that seeing these truths will shake us out of our complacency. I’m not sure. In Britain I do feel there is a strange mismatch between a desire for fictional violence; drama or computer games, and a distaste for real violence.
I am not convinced that fictional violence is always numbing. Our subconscious mind cannot differentiate between what is real and what is not. Fictional violence can therefore make us anxious or even paranoid. It is well recognized that people perceive themselves in danger in such situations as walking home alone, or in isolated places, when the likelihood of being attacked is, in reality, minimal (unless you are a young male, late teens to early twenties, then you should be keeping your wits about you).
Our disgust and abhorrence at REAL corpses and horrifically wounded bomb victims makes us turn away because we are powerless. We cannot stop it; it has already happened. Photojournalism casts us as impotent voyeurs. We feel ineffective, alarmed and frustrated.
We have some power over the televised fictional violence because we have chosen to watch, often knowing that there will be rough stuff, or we can stick to U and PG films. Where computer games are concerned, children have some power when they play such games; they have none when they accidentally see graphic and real violence that they cannot prevent, or suffering that they cannot alleviate.
That sounds as though I think we all have an altruistic gene. I mean that we do not only have ‘fight or flight’ responses, but that our natural urge is either to defend ourselves, help the wounded, or run like hell. With photojournalism we can do none of these things.
I am not a boy and cannot speak for the delight they experience in shooting and killing enemies on screen with a malicious zeal and ease that is startling – until we consider our tribal roots and wonder how we have managed to suppress this instinctive brutality for so long. It does strike a parent oddly having such carnage going on in the living room.
Buerk wants to raise our awareness, and he is right to do so, but my feeling is that journalists and editors need to be scrupulously selective, to make the point that atrocities happen, but not to labour it so that we no longer hear the message.
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