**WARNING** This post contains graphic content - Viewer discretion is advised.

Over the past couple of days in class, we have been discussing the effects of media violence and the reactions to disturbing or frightening media content. I found these lectures incredibly relevant when I stumbled across a CNN article. 

I was scrolling through Buzzfeed when I came across an article about the attacks in Gaza. I decided a quick skim was in order to stay up-to-date on the topic. While reading, I followed the first hyperlink I saw, as I do with all Buzzfeed articles (I like to know where they source their information from). The link to me to a CNN article about the lack of cease-fire in Gaza. As with all CNN articles these days, a video immediately began playing on the page, and without warning I was watching the corpse of a young boy be carried through a crowd.

It actually took me a minute to process what I was seeing. I had been given no warning nor even a choice to watch the scene. It was horrifying. I continued to watch the segment as it featured children talking about the boy, the explosions, the names of the dead and visual descriptions of dead bodies in the street. It also showed clips of pools of blood and what appeared to be small pieces of flesh, but what I found most disturbing was the amount of times I watched corpses of children ben hauled around. One scene in particular stood out: it shows the feet of corpse of a child being lowered on a table; the sheet the child is wrapped up in is covered in blood. I still cannot get the image out of my head.

Outraged and hoping this was not a global trend, I went on BBC.com to get a sense of how the British media was handling this issue. There were some very notable difference in how BBC handled their graphic content. First, a video did not immediately begin to play when I opened the page (much to my relief). Secondly, there was a warning, not once, but twice before he video began. The first warning is small text floating next to the play button, and the second warning comes when the video starts and includes a screen of text and an announcer stating "the following report contains some disturbing images." 

I was so delighted at the warning that I continued to watch the video. Boy, was that a mistake. I had assumed that the disturbing images would be similar to what I had seen in the CNN video (dead bodies, blood, etc.). I was dead wrong (no pun intended). The first video opens with a child screaming and crying in pain. She was being held down as her head was bandaged. I couldn't watch anymore. While the content on CNN was in fact horrifying, this struck deep within me. I was so disturbed by the first few seconds of the video that I didn't even watch the other videos on the page, warning label or not.

Trying to distract myself from what I saw, I tried to find other similar articles on CNN and BBC to compare how each entity handled graphic content. I settled on a two stories about a suicide bombing in Nigeria. Besides the obvious differences in the actual text of the articles I noticed one really, really big difference: BBC had an incredibly graphic image and CNN did not. Unlike in the last BBC article, this photo came without warning. Splashed at the top of the page was a photo of a woman looking on the crime scene of the explosion. Beyond the yellow police tape, we can see blood, and what appears to be flesh, in an explosion pattern on the ground. 

I was speechless. I just sat there staring at my computer thinking, "They are not showing me where the suicide bomber exploded.No, they can't be... OMG they did. WHAT IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE?!" To escape this image, I jumped over to CNN to find its take on reporting this tragedy When I came across the article I was shocked, but not for the same reasons I was shocked at the BBC article. CNN's article completely lacked a photo. I pondered this for a moment because it is very unlike CNN, or any large news agency for that matter, to post an article without an accompanying photo. I thought that maybe they could not find one, but that would be highly unlikely. So, the only conclusion I could draw was that CNN intentionally left a photo out of the article, but why?

I find myself asking why a lot.
"Why would you use that clip of a dead child's body?"
"Why would you show an innocent child writhing in pain?"
"Why do you show use images of other's spilled blood?"
"WHY do you supply images of human flesh laying in the street?"
"Why don't you have more warnings?"
"Why are your warnings not specific enough?
"Why? Why? Why?"

Since this has been a topic of discussion in class this week, I found that these articles were extremely relevant and may have not been taken as seriously if I saw them at another point in time. So, I pose a two-part question to you: Why is the news media pushing these graphic images, and is it the duty of the news media to warn the viewers of the specifics of their disturbing content?