When is information perhaps too much?

Note to self. Stop listening to the news. Normally it is all bad. Murders nightly, planet fast going down the tubes etc. Not much if anything I can do about it except sign various petitions. Too depressing. Perhaps better to drop dead one day totally oblivious.

Dreadful as the details are, I think we owe it to the victim to have an understanding of what she endured. If we are unaware it is easy to comment and take a view based on ignorance, sympathy for the ‘16 year old boy’ and our own more normal view of society.

I find all such details quite disturbing, not just this one. I stopped watching the news a while ago.

Surely there needs to be limits to what is made public .
I am aware it is up to ourselves whether we want to read or hear what 'sick'/evil persons do to another but my feelings are for the parents of this little child and would they want the' world and its wife' to know in such detail what they will have to live with for the rest of their lives?.

There is so much prurient interest in this type of crime. The media knows it and as others have said, exploits the grief. There is a lot said about "respect" these days and everyone is very keen on having it - but less and less true respect is shown.

They also report from war torn areas and places of mass tragedy with insufficient respect shown towards the people there.

.........

As an aside : re the Begum case (mentioned above), I noticed yesterday Radio 4 were trailing a drama which "explored a situation very like" that of Shamima Begum! Why we have to have radio drama taken over with "the news" is also beyond me.

We're to be told the name of the murderer today.
I hope he gets his just deserts in prison. You can bet your life there will be plenty of people looking the other way.

Just when we think we are beyond being shocked by anything we hear, something like this happens. And I go back to a comment I made in a previous posting. He's been tried as a child. Yet there are many people who consider 16 year olds should be given the vote as they are perfectly able to make mature decisions. We do have double standards. At 16 he must have known exactly how atrocious his actions were.

Deeply upsetting piece of news, as is any suffering of children at the hands of adults or even an older child. As you say Maw too much information for the general public. How awful to sit on the jury of such a case, I'm sure it would haunt you forever.

There is such an ambiguity around "age" at the moment, specifically with the Shamima Begum debacle and the fact that she was 15 when she travelled to Syria and in particular as there are those pushing for the voting age to be reduced to 16, but in the eyes of the law 16 is still a child. I suppose age is quite arbitrary if one is a psychopath or have developmental issues. Under normal circumstances 16 is old enough to understand right from wrong and cause and effect.

Poor little Alesha, she looked such a happy soul, I believe she loved going to Bute to stay with her father and grandparents how awful for them and of course her poor mother.

The boy did seem to be under the influence of drugs and I believe pornography came up at some stage, both very pernicious imo.

123Coco when it is on TV or radio you have no warning.
I can choose not to open a paper or to read things which I know will live with me, but once heard it is hard to “unhear”

123coco Not so easy when it is in your face in every newspaper, tv and radio news. We will then be getting the tv specials about it - all advertised during programmes with high numbers of viewers.

I had to go in the back kitchen when this news came on. I do enough crying at news as it is and because I have GGC the same/similar age it makes me feel ill. Nobody who has any feelings does not want to hear further details.

Then my " death penalty " emotions take over as I ask myself do we need such monsters in our society and answer myself, as I've done dozens of times, NO.

Simples - Don’t read or watch it!

To lose a child is the worse possible thing any parent (or grandparent) could go through, but to lose a child this way - how on earth could you EVER get over it. I just feel so much for the family.

I avoid news like this - it feels wrong to read / view .

I am upset enough to know a child has been raped and murdered but to follow that with details and images serves no purpose except to shock and sensationalise cases like this.

What I can imagine in my own mind is heartbreaking enough without added gory details from a news segment.

Just my thoughts but I do fear sharing so many details of cases like this and the many others we now have information of will slowly desensitise society with negative consequences.

Possibly MissAdventure.

It was enough for me to know this poor child had been raped and killed - I didn't want to know the details. It was bad enough for her parents to have to listen to the details during the trial, do they really need to know that those details are being published.

The boy has been found guilty and we can expect to read all about him, interviews with his parents, neighbours, teachers, even with the second cousin of someone who once sat next to him on a bus. I just want him to be put away and forgotten.

I couldn't bear to read the details, the jurors must have been traumatised, listening to the details. How must her parents feel, with all the details splashed across the newspapers?
The pathologist said he had never seen such catastrophic injuries. ?
What puzzles me is that, as the perpetrator is only sixteen. he was classed as a child and tried as a child. However, you can marry at sixteen in Scotland, a bit of an anomaly there, I think.

But when you only know part of the story, you could get very determined about the right or wrong of it. And then post messages to that effect

Hard to see “both sides” of this case IMO .

Fair point.
I was however more concerned with the graphic not to say grisly, details after a rape/murder trial where those closest to the victim risk seeing the awful details splashed across the media.
Hard enough for jurors to cope with, especially parents or grandparents, but there can be an unhealthy even prurient interest by the press which of course sells copies.
That is not the same as “knowing the facts” is it.
I think other posters realised what I was talking about.

Perhaps it helps her family in some way that the public know what was done?
The boy was 16...
I've yet to hear anyone say that he is just a child.

But when you only know part of the story, you could get very determined about the right or wrong of it. And then post messages to that effect.
I am thinking of the Shamima Begum case, there are several threads all of which start with 'she should not be allowed back'. We know very little about her life during the past 4 years, except she was groomed and radicalised at age 15, and since then has lost 2 babies, it seems by different 'husbands'. I want her brought back to find the truth, and for the sake of her current baby.
(Several ex ISIS people have returned and been dealt with, but they were men)

I remember hearing details of the Moors murders. We don't need to know these things. Serves no purpose.

Totally agree with everything already said.I have just read the book by James Bulgers mother.James’s father and both families made the decision to keep details of James suffering from Denise but due to media reports,she is having to learn things she never wanted to hear.The little girl and her family have suffered so greatly and should be shown respect by the media,it will not help them in anyway for these details to have been made public.

Agree with all being said