Dear The Media, you're not as helpful as you think
Sunday, January 30, 2011 at 11:06AM Couple of interesting stories from the Sunday papers today, both involving the media and their responsibility.
First up, senior ministers are backing a change to the law that would prevent the media from reporting the names of criminal suspects until they are charged. This might be a headache for reporters and 'the suspect did this....the suspect did that' might not provide great reading, but I like the proposal.
Can you imagine being wrongly accused of rape or murder? The media circling you like hungry vultures, obtaining your name, address and job, and printing every little detail of your life for all to see. It must be awful. Sure, once you've been proved innocent you'll probably disappear from the media shitstorm as quickly as you entered it, but your name and face is still lodged in the public's memory.
Go for a job interview, the boss thinks he recognises your face and ah yes! You're that bloke who was accused of that crime last year! Wonderful.
There probably shouldn't be a blanket ban on naming the accused before proven guilty. Maybe censor the names of those accused of serious crimes, not petty theft or similar? Or should there be a complete ban? It's a tough one.
Of course I could play devil's advocate and say 'well, if you're innocent and have nothing to hide then why should your identity be protected?' Perhaps a valid point, but the general public gain nothing from knowing the name of the accused, whereas the accused has the shame of having their innocent name printed for all to see.
As you've probably guessed, I can't really form a strong argument one way of t'other, but this story caught my eye and I'll be interested to see where it goes.
Next up in my browse of the Sunday papers is a story stating that security chiefs are calling for live TV news to be delayed by 15 minutes, saying that this could 'save lives'. Live TV is, for the most part, boring and endlessly repetitive. But then someone blows themselves up or a plane crashes, and suddenly we're glued to the TV like there's no tomorrow.
We see unscripted reports shouting into cameras from the scene, helicopters circling and interviews with shaking eyewitnesses. During these events TV news is like a budget disaster movie that you can't turn off. Great, we get to see things as they happen and it's exciting, in a slightly weird way.
But it's not just us watching the live feed of a hotel siege or whatever, so are the bad guys. While we see armed police preparing to enter a building, the baddies are watching too, before running in the opposite direction, leaving the coppers' scuppered.
Home Office officials believe that the live TV footage of the Mumbai Hotel siege helped terrorists discover the movements of security personnel as they prepared to rescue hostages.
Alright then, this is makes sense, so let's have a 15 minute delay. Does 15 minutes really make a difference to our viewing experience of global disasters and terrorist situations? No, it doesn't. But TV execs argue that this live footage actually saves lives, by directing the public away from any disaster hotspot.
Nope, sorry. I'm not buying that. TV news is never on the scene quickly enough for a 15 minute delay to make a difference. And anyway, 15 minutes after a terrorist attack or similar I'd imagine that, if I was nearby, I'd be able to tell something was wrong, so I'd probably not go there. I don't need the TV to tell me that.
How valuable is the 'Live' icon on our TV sets? That's what this all boils down to and I can't see TV stations backing down and removing it anytime soon.
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