PressEthic

In a case that echoes the infamous Rodney King beating, white New Orleans police officers were videotaped repeatedly punching a black man whom they claim was resisting arrest. Regardless of the outcome of the inevitable trial for police brutality, television news producers once again find themselves in a delicate position: how many times should they repeat the disturbing footage?

Television news has been in this position before. In the Rodney King case, some critics claimed that it was the media's editing of the video that framed the story and contributed to the furor over the not guilty verdicts in the criminal case against the LAPD officers. On September 11th, producers made the decision that the footage of the Twin Towers tumbling down had been replayed enough, and to show the footage again compounded the tragedy. This decision has turned into policy: a viewer of American television news will now see footage of a plane headed for the buildings, but hardly ever see the Towers actually tumble.

On ABC's Good Morning America this morning, the footage from New Orleans was replayed three times. Only once did an anchor warn viewers that disturbing images were to come.

Granted, this footage is fundamental to the story. But after a certain amount of time (and after a certain amount of rebroadcasts), producers must recognize that viewers have seen the incident, and to replay it again comes across as crass, turning a story into spectacle. Declining to rebroadcast images that have been shown repeatedly is not self-censorship by any means; rather, it is an acknowledgment that a story that brings into question loaded issues such as race, rebuilding and security in New Orleans should not be reduced to ten seconds of footage alone that, for all the viewer knows, could have been taken out of context.

Some may scoff at this idea, wondering how a culture that created the shoot-em up action movie could become so delicate when it comes to seeing violence on the evening news. But television news has obligations to its viewers that television entertainment does not. Producers should ask themselves: does replaying this footage move the story along, or is it just for shock value?