to feel shocked at the coverage of Gaddafi's death?

[IvySedaiballs]

I don't think she should have been killed like that. IMO he should have been captured, tried and then hanges or whatever. they had him, alive. apparently he was begging for mercy.
now he is dead and can not answer for his vile crimes.

none of the newscoverage that I have seen has addressed this, everyone is just celebrating. yes, he was a bad man, but this doesn't sit right with me.

also, showing pictures of hos dead body body on the six pm news?!

YANBU. Ok he was an awful human being but did we reallly have to stoop to his level? And I say we as every single newspaper this morning showed his bloodied, terrified body just before his death as though the Western media are inviting a massive celebration of his brutal death. i am truly appauled. It's not like I had a choice to avoid it- those images were everywhere this morning.

@toptramp ITA. I found the pictures and descriptions of him begging for mercy and being very bloodied very distressing.

He should have paid with his life but after a trial and his body should not have been dragged through the streets.

The rebels were bound to torture him but do we really have to have it rubbed in our faces? He should have been tried and held to justice properly. Justice has not been done.

As well as the questionable decision to show his body on front pages, there has been a stunningly propagandist tone to some of the coverage. BBC Radio Four news yesterday, for example, spoke of him being found "cowering" in a pipe. Rather than the more neutral "sheltering from enemy fire". Gaddafi was a bad man for sure, but we don't need the news pre-processed to express distaste on our behalf.

They were throwing red meat to their listeners, so that we could gobble up a sense of self-righteous dislike of the man.
If the BBC is prepared to throw away objectivity in one case, why should we trust them to be objective in general?

I'm slightly that The Guardian put it on the front page, visible to anyone in a newsagent's with no option to avoid it.

aliceliddell: did you also see The Telegraph? Full broadsheet full colour picture.

BBC seems to have toned down the 6pm coverage a lot, and I think that's a good thing which I hope endures (I don't think we need to keep seeing the capture, and the morgue pix won't be news after today).

Before seeing this thread I had discussed with dh the issue of showing graphic images of the dead in the news. It has always deeply disturbed me that the media seem to ignore the basic respect that one human should show for the dead body of another human, no matter how evil that person was.
Showing countless pictures of their corpse (whether Gaddafi, Michael Jackson, or any of the other recent examples) suggests a voyeuristic, medieval attitude that we should be ashamed of.
I will be very interested to see if there is any further discussion about this in the papers over the next few weeks.

Am I the only one thinking this happens much more with furriners than nice White Westerners? I didn't see the Telegraph. I'm surprised at the two papers mentioned because they're both quite vocal about their (different) ideas of mrality and decency

Its' interesting what you say bottersnike about it being voyeristic showing bodies on the news... we do have a tradition in this country of viewing the dead. I don't mean in these circumstances, but years ago wakes were always held for the dead, with an open coffin. Monarch and other heads of state are usually left lying in state for a period before their funeral. I think we've become a bit sheltered from death in this country so that any images of it are shocking to us. I'm not sure that's necessarily a good thing. Death is as much a part of life as birth, it's something we all do, and I think a lot of the fear of a natural death after a long life wouldn't exist if we were all more familiar with what death looks like. For the most it's quite peaceful.

Obviously that's a totally different conversation which doesn't really relate to whether it's appropriate to show someone being essentially beaten to death on tv. But I thought I'd put my two penneth in anyway :o

eugh. only read to page 2 but there are some nasty minds on this thread. i agree with OP.

Haven't read the whole thread, but I also found the news coverage and newspaper pictures distressing. I know it is hard for us to judge, as we are removed from it, but I just find it hard to stomach. I had to turn the news over last night and, although I bought a paper today, I can't look at the photos.

headfairy in ireland we still hold wakes and have open coffins. in fact a closed coffin is rare and would usually only happen if there were bad facial injuries on the corpse.

scarything it's a much healthier approach to death I think...

I think he should have been brought to trial.
But then I keep thinking about what I heard on 5live yesterday. Apparently the Italian Embassy was next door to one of Gaddafi's places and they had to complain that there were constantly bags of body parts left outside for the rubbish collectors.
Then I think that I'm not sure he deserved any dignity at all.

It was the pictures of him just before he died looking terrified that I found particularly disturbing. It really is an awful end to a totally awful situation.

I filed past HMQM's coffin - definitely closed.

They kept Chairman Mao on show until he was positively greenish.

But viewing associated with funerary rites is totally different from footage of the actual death.

I watched the ITV early evening news too - they have remained dreadfully inappropriate - too much morgue footage, very explicit beating of a prisoner, too graphic for 6:30. OK, they're not licence fee funded, but it's still a major pre-watershed news broadcast. It is just wrong.

I have made a conscious decision not to watch the news but have heard about the coverage. We need to remember that someone is dying and really is no need for us to see it. There is too much voyeurism in the name of news these days....And far too much detail. Personally, I would rather go back to the sanitised versions of yesteryear.

toptramp me too, it was that hunted expression. I find the mob mentality shocking too. People do scary things sometimes when their passions are inflamed.

Edith don't forget, even if we don't pay directly via license fee, we pay via advertising and we don't even know how much of the price of our Sainsbury's bill goes on Jamie Oliver's ads

Many bad things happen in the world; I just don't want to see it played out graphically in front of me.

I have a funny feeling a portion of the licence fee does go to ITV news, though I may be wrong so feel free to correct me if I am. I know Channel 4 gets a portion of the licence fee.

Well peeps, lots more terrible disgusting bloodied pictures of the Terminator today...and all those misguided libyans celebrating their freedom.

I agree there should have been very open warnings, not show it so graphically on the earlier news slots and not have it so plastered over the papers, especially the front page. But not sure if I agree that explicit pics of war situations desensitises us, I think it easier to to put what really goes on in war to the back of our minds when they make it all nice and clean and just report the words, TBH if we are going to be involved in situations like Iraq and Libya then we should know more of what really goes on and how it affects those there.

I really didnt need my 8 year old seeing a picture of his bloodied corpse right after school today.

That is all.