kidwithknife
Posts: 193
Joined: 9/9/2008
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This is a complicated one. To start, I'd take issue with this from the linked article:
quote:
The televised suicide in Britain follows a well-publicized case in Florida, where a teenager killed himself on camera last month and broadcast the chilling images live on an Internet site.
Whether you're in favour or against euthanasia, I really don't think there is a valid parallel between someone with a terminal illness making a rational decision to end their own life and a mentally disturbed teenager filming their suicide online.
Ironically, that part of the report strikes me as far more sensationalist then anything I've seen reported about the documentary itself.
Actually, from what I can tell (I haven't seen it) the documentary seems non-sensationalist and sensibly done. Tentatively, I don't think there's necessarily wrong with filming this kind of suicide, as part of the broader picture. There's not actually much different between that and showing corpses on the evening news for me.
However, where this becomes more complicated for me is the fact it was broadcast on Sky. Sky are obviously a commerical channel, so ratings are their prime priority. And broadcasting it on their reality channel (which is pretty tacky) isn't the venue I'd choose for a sensitive issue like this to be aired. I'd actually have been far less uneasy if the BBC had shown this- they aren't bound by ratings in the way commerical television is.
This is pretty telling in the article though:
quote:
Care Not Killing, an anti-euthanasia group aligned with the Catholic Church and other religious organizations in Britain, denounced the broadcast as "a cynical attempt to boost television ratings" and persuade Parliament to legalize assisted suicide.
"There is a growing appetite from the British public for increasingly bizarre reality shows," said the group's director, Peter Saunders. "We'd see it as a new milestone. It glorifies assisted dying when there is a very active campaign by the pro-suicide lobby to get the issue back into Parliament."
It's very interesting that an anti euthanasia group is against this, at least in part, precisely because they don't want the general public to see what assisted suicide looks like. As the article mentions at the end, 80% of the British public support assisted suicide in cases like this. And I have no time for the complaints of those who believe that their personal religious beliefs are more important then the will of the British people.
_____________________________
We went to see the fall of Rome - I thought it would please us
To watch how the mighty go in a blaze of hubris
But I just stood there hypnotised by all the beautiful madness
(New Model Army, Into the Wind)
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Suicide on TV condemned in Britain - 
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