Madam, - On television we sometimes hear presenters warn that viewers may find some scenes in an upcoming report disturbing. That allows us to use our discretion, especially if there are vulnerable children present.
If breakfast television viewers were about to be shown a clip of five men about to be executed - similar to the photograph on page 11 of your edition of August - such a warning would have been issued.
However, there is no on/off switch for the newspaper.
I binned page 11 of Thursday's edition. Let us never "scandalise one of these little ones". - Yours, etc,
JOSEPH O'CALLAGHAN, Wyattville Park, Dún Laoghaire, Co Dublin.
Madam, - I was shocked to see the photograph in Thursday's Irish Timesof five Iranian men with nooses round their necks, awaiting imminent execution. It was a distressing image, and one that I believe demonstrates double standards within the Irish media. Had these men been white and Christian, or living in Christian countries that employ capital punishment, such as the United States, publication of this image would have been deemed unacceptable.
It has become apparent to me in recent years that our media readily shows images of dead or dying people in non-Christian countries, Iraq being the prime example (to which we are exposed almost nightly), but is far more reticent to show similarly graphic images of carnage or human suffering closer to home.
Somehow it has seeped into our collective mindset that it is normal and acceptable to broadcast pictures of starving black babies, dead or dying Arabs, and Middle Eastern men about to be executed. This kind of selective publication reveals a deep-seated chauvinism within the Irish media that perpetuates the dehumanising of the vast majority of humanity. - Yours, etc,
JOHN CULLEN, Avondale, Sligo.