Minister turned off by gory TV programs
Minister turned off by gory TV programs
JAKARTA (JP): Private television stations were reminded
yesterday of their role as a medium to foster unity and educate
the public, and were told not to dramatize news reports with
graphic footage.
During a meeting with representatives of the five private
television stations in his office yesterday, Minister of
Information Muhammad Alwi Dahlan said television touched a large
segment of society and that stations had an important role in
lifting public awareness and understanding of important issues.
He said news and feature stories should be reported with the
aim of unifying the people.
He also called on television stations not to dramatize news
reports to increase ratings.
The representatives from RCTI, SCTV, ANteve, TPI and Indosiar
were reporting to the minister on preparations for an upcoming
television series, or sinetron, festival.
The National Institute of Sciences (LIPI) yesterday slammed
television news reporting for its vulgar content when it
announced the results of a study on the subject.
Communications expert Rusdi Muchtar said the study concluded
that graphic footage was still prevalent in many news reports.
"Such vulgarity is evident in television (news reports), such
as showing the scene of a homicide in detail. One can even
sometimes see blood and part of a corpse," he said as quoted by
Antara.
He expressed concern over the psychological effects such
scenes could have on children.
While acknowledging that there is some debate over how
television directly influences societal behavior, Rusdi said the
institute's research in four cities -- Medan in North Sumatra,
Ujungpandang in South Sulawesi and Bekasi and Bogor in West Java
-- found a positive correlation between viewing action films and
the level of crime.
If violent action films are linked with the graphic scenes
shown in crime reports, viewers, especially young ones, could
perceive real life violence as an affirmation of the violent
scenes they see in movies, Rusdi said.
"Maybe for adults the scenes in action films and criminal
television reports are quite normal and have little influence.
But for children and teenagers, the fiction they see in films and
the violence they see in TV crime news unite as a single
reality," he said.
He urged strong evaluation of visual content in crime news
reports, saying that news could be accurately reported without
graphic film clips.
"The viewer should be able to understand and appreciate the
full content of the news without the station having to exploit
the scene or victim of the crime," he said.
"For that purpose we need to study more about presenting
pictures so that scenes in crime news reports do not ignore
ethics." (mds)