Reality TV

Do you ever watch 'Newswatch' on the BBC? It's worth a look - but only if you like to laugh at the stupidity of some of the viewers comments or to throw your eyes up in disbelief at the bland and pointless justifications that BBC executives come up with in reply.

Anyway, the one I watched this last weekend got me thinking. The viewer in question was criticising the BBC for the showing shocking scenes from Libya that were being shown on the 6 o'clock news and saying that they should be more careful to observe the watershed.

The BBC editor in response - who is, of course, never wrong - went on to say that they didn't show the worse scenes and went on to show a piece by Olga Guerin from the scene of a mass murder of Gaddafi's opponents in Tripoli. She stopped at the gate and told the camera that she couldn't show you what was inside because it was so horrific.

Full marks then to the Daily Mirror for this piece from which the above picture has been lifted.

Maybe it's about time that TV in general and the BBC in particular stopped sanitising what we are allowed to watch. War is horrific; it's not a video game where people get killed and then miraculously get up again and only have another 4 lives left. 

Last week, the people of Royal Wooten Basset paid their last respects to the fallen of Afghanistan and Iraq. These young men did not get up again after being killed. They were shot, blown up and murdered. If they were lucky it was quick and painless.

Spare a thought for the maimed and disabled and disfigured that war produces. 

Maybe it's time for proper reality TV. Maybe if we were shown the full horror, we might be a little more reluctant to start shooting?