"Au revoir les enfants"
Rai: children and the representation of pain on TV

5. Conclusions

A critical analysis such as that carried out has sense only if it is aimed at finding ameliorative solutions, proposals and indications for the future. However, it would be wrong if we tried to lay down real guide lines: first of all because there are plenty of legal rulings and regulations (of the Institutive Law of the Journalists Register and the Treviso Charter). And then because it is a question, if anything, of making the former and the latter effective by means of the creation of direct and indirect instruments (by the Observatory that monitors the continual training of journalists).

All we should do here is to pause briefly to consider what the analysis carried out "has shown us with our own eyes" and what it has, more generally, been able to call to our attention.

1. First of all, the wider problem of agenda setting has been presented; that is, what news items are included in a newscast at the expense of others, and why and how much space they are given. Because, some people will say, the micro (that is, the individual stories) are presented as macro (that is, events that are important for everyone). And because, others would add, the news must be to a great extent negative, as if "good news" really were "no news".
2. A second factor to consider regards more specifically painful news, especially involving a child as the main character. It is necessary to remember that there are millions of children in front of a television newscast who may be particularly upset by news stories like that of Cogne. "Mummy, but was it his Mummy?" is a question that many children in many Italian homes must have asked. It is therefore necessary to give the right space and use the right language for this specific event.
3. On the other hand, it is necessary to consider that the people involved must be treated with compassion; apart from the tragedy they are suffering, they find themselves the object of excessive, disproportionate curiosity. The same can be said for the victims, who must be shown great respect (which sometimes means silence).
4. It is necessary to guard against obsessive updating, which is the temptation to make news reporting into story telling. The information should consist of details that are in fact new (otherwise, what kind of information is it?). There is the risk of overlapping genres and the creation of a cheap novel.
5. Care must be taken over language, avoiding adjectives that are over-dramatic and uselessly emphatic, styles of expression that are typical of story telling (it is not a fairy story and the characters are not imaginary).
6. It is necessary to guard against the abuse of obsessively repetitive and over-dramatic images.
7. It also has to be noted that more severity is necessary as regards the programmes giving services on news stories and in-depth treatment. The reconstruction of all the minute details of the event in question risks encouraging a dangerous voyeurism, and will not necessarily give inspiration for debate on themes linked to it but which may also be of general interest. The service otherwise remains as just a flat piece of news and therefore does not fulfil itself or its intentions of in-depth study.
8. Care must be taken of how the many different voices are managed, which first of all must be in fact different, and must then be made to interact and not just placed side by side. Only in this way can each expert really give a contribution to knowledge without just being limited to "reciting a part" that leaves everyone dissatisfied.
9. More in general, it would be opportune to consider the role that crimes involving painful facts play in the news, and if it is correct to respect the right to reporting such news, perhaps it is also correct to respect the rights of the viewers to know that we do not live in the Garden of Eden but also in the Valley of tears, even here on earth.