Some sensitivity, please

Barely a few hours into his death, horrific accident images of the revered late Karpal Singh was circulated over social media websites.

In the MH370 incident, images of corpses, supposedly bodies of passengers on the ill-fated flight were ‘leaked’ to the public on the third day of the plane’s disappearance.

Adding on to its ‘authenticity’, came attached with the images were audio recordings from a hospital staff claiming that the morgue has prepared hundreds of body bags to collect remains recovered from the Straits of Malacca.

And then, a few days later, photos of teenagers overdosed on drugs at the Future Music Festival Asia made its way over WhatsApp inboxes and re-tweeted over Twitter.

The three mentions above are, of course, just recent examples out of the many insensitive, offensive and sometimes disturbing images and videos shared across freely, disregard of its validity.

But that is just how technology has inadvertently shaped the way and speed of information sharing in society.

I’m not questioning the technological advancement that we have came to benefit immensely from but rather the weighing of our conscience and judgement in publishing such materials, if any, before clicking share, like, or send.

Has the ease of sharing information and the ‘race’ to see who gets it out fastest, made us less sensitive and more reckless to what we consume and share?

Or have we become desensitized by an over-exposure to such material, that it has become okay, a norm, to post graphic photos of dead bodies?

As a child, I recall seeing the front page of a local daily depicting a car dragging a mutilated, burnt corpse in the aftermath of the May 1998 riots in Indonesia.

That horrific photo had left such an impact on me that whenever I read or talk about the riot, that image comes to mind. It never fails to invoke a sense of anger and horror that such atrocity was allowed to happen and a reminder that in some parts of the world, it is happening still. Such is the effect of that photo to me.

Working in news organisations, it is crucial that we disseminate information quickly and reliably. Still, we have a social obligation to be cautious towards the sensitivity, privacy and implications of every information, photo or video published.

Certainly, such consideration and judgement is not expected from the public.

Nevertheless, it doesn’t hurt to take some time to think of the families already devastated by the loss of their loved ones. Are we not playing a hand in further victimising the distraught families by having tragic images of their father, wife or son circulated all over the Internet? Worse still is spreading fake information.

Sixteen years after the seeing that horrific riot photo, I am exposed to these kinds of images and videos more frequently. Not because I seek them out. More often than not, they rudely appear on my Facebook timeline. And I can’t help but to question if any image or video will be deemed too sensitive to be shared at all, in the future?