PressEthic

On the continuing subject of France, here's another article that caught my attention.

At least two television stations scaled back broadcasting images of flaming vehicles -- a mainstay of coverage -- to avoid stoking violence. Some channels decided not to provide daily police figures on the number of cars burned overnight, in the thousands since troubles began Oct. 27.

The police said that coverage of the violence spawns "copycat" rioters. But the TV stations said that their reason for not broadcasting footage of burning cars is that they don't want to give the rioters the satisfacton of publicity for their actions. And some claim to be avoiding sensationalism:

"A burning car is extremely impressive," said LCI weekend editor Laurent Drezner, adding that the channel continues to show the hulks of burned-out cars. "We are informing without sensationalism."

I have to say I don't agree with Drezner's logic. If you're going to show skeletons of charred cars, surely showing them in flames is only marginally worse. Moreover, the burning cars are a very prominent feature of the riots. Omitting something that big is the same as not telling the whole story. LCI isn't cutting out sensationalism; it's cutting out half the truth of what's happening.

(Further on in the article, it says that some TV crews and journalists were cutting back because of violence directed towards them. Now that I can understand.)

The article also poses these questions: Is this self-censorship? Or a sense of responsibility?

I feel as I did about publishing pictures of those killed by Katrina -- I think broadcasting footage of the "flaming vehicles" is appropriate given the context. And I think not broadcasting it is self-censorship. The media outlets' first responsibility is to their viewers and they should be giving them the whole picture.

[On a side note, I keep coming across statistics related to the chronic burning of cars in France. I can't remember where I saw it, but after the Times reported that more than 80 cars a day are burnt, another paper reported 3500 cars a month (which is approximately 115 cars a day). And none of these papers cite sources. Seriously, what is that about?]