Romania

[RO] Suicide on Television - Broadcasting Council Objects

IRIS 1998-10:1/30

Mariana Stoican

Journalist, Bucharest

Television coverage of a woman's suicide recently prompted the Romanian Broadcasting Council to draw attention to certain provisions in the law and insist that they must be respected.

Various news programmes had shown the woman in question setting fire to herself, and then struggling desperately to put out the flames, while screaming for help.

The Council considered the effects of such reports on the general public highly questionable. It specifically referred to the European Convention on Transfrontier Television (Article 7) and Recommendation No. R(97)19 of the Council of Europe's Committee of Ministers on the portrayal of violence in the electronic media. It also pointed out that Sections 1 and 2 of the Electronic Media Act and Article 1 of its own Resolution No. 12/1997 prohibited incitement to physical, psychological or verbal violence. Showing scenes of violence on television was an affront to human dignity - and punishable as such by the authorities concerned.