EDITORIAL – Lack of media sensitivity
When a bomb exploded at the south entrance to the Batasan complex in
And true to expectations, the tv networks provided the latest news and video footages of what was happening. It is during times like these, however, that unless network news gatekeepers are careful, some scenes can slip through unnoticed to leave a bad taste in the mouth.
One particularly disturbing scene was that of a non-uniformed hospital staff performing CPR on one of the blast victims. The man was shown, in unbearably prolonged scenes replayed over and over later, pumping hard on the chest of one victim.
Clearly it was not to the best interest of the public to see in graphic detail what goes on behind the flimsy plastic curtains of hospital emergency rooms. The need for news updates does not require the audience to keep cadence with each heart-breaking and stomach-churling pump.
It would have been pardonable if the scene was inadvertently shown once. But the scene was shown repeatedly, not just throughout the night of the incident, but in the periodic replays for days onward.
Such insensitivity, not just to good taste but to human privacy and dignity, is appalling and cannot be excused away as part of the need for media to be faithful to the truth. The truth about human life slowly ebbing away need not be shown live in full color to be faithful.
Yet, surprisingly, such insensitivity, clumsiness, lack of ethics and human compunction escaped both scrutiny and condemnation by the self-appointed guardians of media professionalism and responsibility.
There was no outcry from the holier-than-thou saints of Philippine journalism. Was their silence due to the fact that among the guilty parties are some of the supposed highly-respected personalities in media to whom they are always partial in judgment?
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