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AIBU?

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Original poster

To wish they'd not go into such graphic detail?

83 replies

Igglybuff · 20/04/2010 18:51

I was reading yet another sad story about a poor kid beaten to death here

I felt sick as it outlined the injuries suffered by the little boy. I thought is it really necessary to describe his injuries? Surely reporting that he was beaten is enough?

I know I could decide not to read the story but I want to know that justice is being done.

AIBU to think that journalists writing these pieces should not be so graphic?

OP posts:
Original poster
Igglybuff · 20/04/2010 19:17

I'm not dictating anything. I just think the level of detail is a bit much.

OP posts:
QueenofDreams · 20/04/2010 19:18

I find the gory details too difficult to deal with. I'm with AF on this one I think. A friend of mine linked a video of FB about baby P and it was so graphically described. I couldn't finish watching, as it just made me feel too sick. It's enough to know he died at the hands of family, with his own mother complicit in his abuse. It's enough to know he suffered horrendous things. THat is enough to tell anyone that he endured things NO PERSON should ever have to suffer, let alone a child.

AnyFucker · 20/04/2010 19:18

no, ZZ, not for me

if something so horrific were to happen to my child I would not like the whole of the population reading the graphic details in some newspaper, for example

I wasn't advocating a blanket whitewash of reporting

Just a bit of dignity, for those children

However, I might be more inclined for all details to be published if it made any difference to sentencing/punishment of offenders

But it clearly does not (that is a whoooooole other thread, though )

Original poster
Igglybuff · 20/04/2010 19:19

Zigzag if my child went through that, no I wouldn't want the nitty gritty details out there.

OP posts:
QueenofDreams · 20/04/2010 19:24

Question is: does reporting the details stop it happening again to other children?
I don't think it does because the kind of person who is going to kill a child is not going to be put off by reading that description. All it does is outrage the kind of people who already think that this is sick and should be stopped.

Ladyanonymous · 20/04/2010 19:27

If we don't know what injuries a child has sustained then how do we know what signs to look out for to stop in happening from other children we may come across in the future?

By burying our heads in the sand we remain ignorant and by doing that allow other children to become victims of the perpetrators of these crimes.

JackBauer · 20/04/2010 19:29

AnyFucker is making a lot of sense on this thread so to start I shall just agree with what she has said.

'Some people want to know...not because they are sick, but because they will then call up some MP's or people who may have the influence to try and stop these maniacs who reproduce and then kill their children.'

That IMO is a flawed argument, I for one do not need all the miserable nasty details to want to do something about it.

In fact the reason I no longer have a direct debit to the NSPCC is that they insisted on sending out misery porn begging letters. I rang and explained exactly wehy this was so upsetting to me and they said they couldn't not do it, so I demanded they remove all records of my name and address from their systems.

EveWasFramed · 20/04/2010 19:30

Well said, Lady, I agree. It is unpleasant and horrifying, but that doesn't make it's validity any less.

EveWasFramed · 20/04/2010 19:32

They were presented in a factual way...there was no emotion, no bias...just a report from a trial witness giving testimony in a case. So, there's no begging here...just an account of an event. Not really misery porn, as you keep classifying it...

EveWasFramed · 20/04/2010 19:34

Wait...JackBauer...you withdrew your name from a charity that helps abused children, because you kept reading the miserable accounts? If you knew they were miserable, why not just know you were donating, and throw those testimonials in the recycling?

Spidermama · 20/04/2010 19:35

I'm a journalist and one of my first jobs as a radio reporter, fresh out of college, was to go and door step the mother of a young boy who had been killed when a wall fell on him that morning.

I just remember the mother shaking her head through the window at me. I felt really bad.

Then I got an interview with the neighbour who had gone out to help. He described how the blood was spraying out 'like a fountain'. He went on and on in incredibly graphic detail. An outpouring.

I was so upset driving back. My editor heard the interview and loved it. He praised me for getting it and played it over and over again. He even clipped the 'fountain' bit to use in order to tease or preview that night's Drivetime programme.

I remember there were a couple of complaints. Rightly so. The news ed was so hardened and as a new journalist I felt I had to be professional and not emotional at all. It was so unnecessary though.

I have to say I was only there for 3 months then got a job with the BBC and have been working for them ever since. Standards of taste would have meant a clip like that would not have been used. Generally speaking, the BBC is less salacious or at least more conscious of the need not to upset people.

Original poster
Igglybuff · 20/04/2010 19:36

anonymous it's for professionals to know the signs not a layman reading a paper. If I see a kid with bruises, odd behaviour etc etc I'd like to think I'd be concerned because I have common sense not because I read some grim description.

OP posts:
nickytwotimes · 20/04/2010 19:39

I never read these pieces either. I don;t see that any good can come of knowing graphic details of terrible acts.
I am not sure where I stand wrt whether or not they should be published. There is a fair bit of misery/torture porn around which is incredibly distasteful, but I am not sure where the line is. When incidents such as baby p are reported, the line is definitely crossed, but I don;t know what I think about less sensationalist reporting on trials tbh.

Kaloki · 20/04/2010 19:43

In an official report then details need to be written. In a tabloid?? No, definitely not. It's real life not a horror film.

That much detail isn't necessary. How does releasing that detail help a)justice or b)the family.

a) all the details will be released to those who need to know. Members of the general public really don't

b) can you imagine how it'd feel to not only know what your child went through, but know that everyone else knew too. And in the case or high profile murders releasing so much information means that sick people are able to use that info in media. Eg. there was a game released couple of years back which used the Bulger murder as part of it's plot. Every horrifying detail.

AnyFucker · 20/04/2010 19:46

oh, kaloki...I despair that there are people like that in the world (the James Bulger game....game ???? wtf)

hearing something like that just strengthens my argument, tbh

Kaloki · 20/04/2010 19:48

Exactly, luckily the game was pulled before it was published. Which was a great relief. However, not before his family heard about it

Spidermama · 20/04/2010 19:49

I'm a journalist and one of my first jobs as a radio reporter, fresh out of college, was to go and door step the mother of a young boy who had been killed when a wall fell on him that morning.

I just remember the mother shaking her head through the window at me. I felt really bad.

Then I got an interview with the neighbour who had gone out to help. He described how the blood was spraying out 'like a fountain'. He went on and on in incredibly graphic detail. An outpouring.

I was so upset driving back. My editor heard the interview and loved it. He praised me for getting it and played it over and over again. He even clipped the 'fountain' bit to use in order to tease or preview that night's Drivetime programme.

I remember there were a couple of complaints. Rightly so. The news ed was so hardened and as a new journalist I felt I had to be professional and not emotional at all. It was so unnecessary though.

I have to say I was only there for 3 months then got a job with the BBC and have been working for them ever since. Standards of taste would have meant a clip like that would not have been used. Generally speaking, the BBC is less salacious or at least more conscious of the need not to upset people.

AgentZigzag · 20/04/2010 20:00

'Question is: does reporting the details stop it happening again to other children?'

It might not stop the people who do these kind of disgusting things from doing them, but it will galvanise enough outrage to put pressure on the government to up their budgets to social service departments, even if they think it'll get them a few votes.

It's keeping abuse like this as an important news story so that people don't forget the children who had to go through it.

Because the details of Baby Peters experiences were just so horrifying, he has gone down in our collective memory. If the news had just said another baby has died at the hands of his 'mother' and her boyfriend, people wouldn't remember him would they?

I wouldn't like the details of an horrific attack on my child to be made public, but I would agree with it because it's within all our interests to be shocked by this to stop these people doing it to other children.

Kaloki · 20/04/2010 20:04

AgentZigzag But in Baby P's case, all anyone really needed to know was that it wasn't picked up by SS when it should have been. Did anyone need to know the minutest details of the pain inflicted? Who does that really benefit?

AnyFucker · 20/04/2010 20:06

If it had added several more years to Peter's tormentor's sentences...then way-hayyy, report what you like

But it doesn't, sadly

EggyAllenPoe · 20/04/2010 20:12

i just find it so upseting (and, well, i am rather hormaonal) and i really try to avoid reading or listening to news reports too closely - it's just too sickening.

I don't need to know. It won't make a wiser person - it'll make me a sadder peson, with a head full of horrid images.

I don't think there is an easy way to prevent that without curtailing freedom of speech. I agre that some people get a macabre kick out of reading this sort of story, looking at the pictures and tell themselves they are doing it to be 'aware' and all....(in fact i encountered this travelling - i told someone i didn't go to he Killing Fields because it would have upset me, and got a lecture about'ignoring history' now I am fully aware of the history,..i felt like asking him if he took it so seriously, if he had cried whilst there, i bet he bloody didn't..)

so not an easy one to solve. I didn't find this sort of thing that upsetting before i became a Mummy....

Original poster
Igglybuff · 20/04/2010 20:13

People who beat their kids will not be shamed into stopping because it might be reported in the press.

OP posts:
AgentZigzag · 20/04/2010 20:18

Kaloki, but I would want to know how it wasn't picked up, and yes I would want to know the details. For example, they couldn't just say he was seen by the doctor in the days before his death, it's an important detail to know that the babys back was broken (sorry for the details, and I'm not being sarcastic) just to know the scale of the injustice done to that little boy. The doctor was neglegant in the extreme, and if there are doctors like that seeing children in my area, I want to know, and I also want to know they're rooted out and their crimes made public.

AF, the only reason they didn't get a bigger sentence was because they couldn't determine who had killed the little lad. But even so, are you saying that you wouldn't mind the details of the crimes against children being made public if it meant the perpetrators got a longer sentence?

Kaloki · 20/04/2010 20:20

It wasn't just the broken back though was it? There are details and there are details

AnyFucker · 20/04/2010 20:21

ZZ...there are a lot of ways in which I wish that perpetrators of this kind of crime were punished more harshly

However, most of them are unprintable here