I read this post on editindia where a girl who, after a tiff with her brother, locked herself in her room and hanged herself and died. She did that after repeatedy seeing Saddam's execution-by-hanging video.

When I read that story, my anger over the irresponsibility of the media in showing graphic videos or images on tv or the newspaper, that I have had for quite sometime flared up. I just had to bring it out here. I've always observed that the media (especially the regional ones) is only obsessed on how 'hot' their news is or 'how much' , they don't even take the effort to understand or foresee what effect their news has on the sometimes sensitive audience. May be they shud remember that television and the newspaper are as easily available to emotionally sensitive people as to everybody else.

Video footage and pictures of beheaded victims of crime, scenes of bomb blasts, bloodshed, rotting bodies, victims of accidental electrocution or those burnt alive are displayed without any kind of viewer descrition. Those gory scenes are enough to make a normal person dizzy, imagine how kids or old people or emotionally sensitive people would react to that.

I'm impressed by how many international channels offer viewer descrition and also a lower age limit for shows where necessary. It could be impossible to get everybody to follow these guidelines but this is the minimum responsibility of the media to be a little careful and thoughtful about those few who are unfortunately not as strong as others and send the news across to everybody else without having any undesired or unfortunate rection on anybody.

I'm not sure how long this type of censorship or atleast viewer discretion will take to crawl to all media, but we can definitely start at home with family members or friends taking care that those sensitive people are not exposed to such graphic scenes. Somebody can write to those at higher levels of management at the TV stations or at the press and hope that there's someone sensible enough to realize what they're doing and take care of it.