Where is the line drawn between a journalist’s necessity to relay truthful information to the public and his responsibility to minimize the harm it can cause?

On the day of the attacks and the next, we all watched in horror as images of people jumping to their deaths were broadcast live and then re-broadcast. Somewhere along the line, someone decided that those images had been aired enough and weren’t necessary any longer, but it was far too late.

Many television stations have chosen in the past to use a five- or six-second delay on live broadcasts that could involve the death of a person. They learned this the hard way, after several stations aired a suicide, live, at the end of a police chase. The delay was created to allow a transmission to be terminated prior to an event’s broadcast.

Even with the delay, if it was used at all in this incident, people all over the world could watch as workers in the World Trade Center leaped off the building to escape the inferno within. From a student journalist’s viewpoint, I would have chosen to air the live events. Although tragic and horrible, those images convey real life. There is no deception — nothing is untruthful about the events, they really occurred. The problem lies in the re-transmission of those images. There was absolutely no reason to air them multiple times, for two days.

These are people. Nobody would want someone else to see them in that position. I know I wouldn’t want to be on television in that situation. So why over and over? It was completely unnecessary.

I also have seen enough of planes hitting buildings, fires and buildings collapsing. Yes, those images needed to be seen. Yes, they were important to show the nation to help it understand the gravity of the events that occurred in New York and Washington. However, we all have seen them now. We all continue to see them in our memories, so why do we still need to see them again and again?

For some reason, television stations have decided that it is more ethically sound to air the plane crashes and collapses of the buildings than to show individuals jumping to their deaths, which are no longer shown. But the audience isn’t dumb. We all know that there are nearly 6,000 people dying or dead in those buildings, and the impact is the same to me, whether I can see individual people or not.

The Society of Professional Journalists has set forth a code of ethics, and first is the journalist’s responsibility to seek the truth and report it accurately. Images are usually truthful (although they can be manipulated or misleading). No problems there.

The second is our responsibility to minimize harm. Here’s where the conflict lies.

Are we not harming those directly affected by the events when we show the horrible images over and over? When I say directly affected, I mean those with family and friends who were murdered by the terrorists.

But are we not also harming those of us indirectly affected also?

CNN did several interviews with child psychologists regarding the negative impacts the newscasts could have on children. We must consider how the audience will react to images that are replayed many times before just airing them. Just think about the O.J. Simpson police chase that we all saw a thousand times; those images are still ingrained in my memory. This is much different — much worse, and everyone will remember.

I’m not only concerned with the effects on children, though. The images affect all of us, and probably negatively. That pit that I feel in my stomach every time I see them tells me that it’s not good for me to watch them over and over. It’s disturbing.

It’s not that I believe the tapes should be burned and never seen again, they are an important part of history. Similar to the demise of the Hindenburg, or the plumes of smoke filmed coming from battleships in Pearl Harbor. I just believe that we need a break from them.

The news has been covered. The tragedy was seen by all. Let’s give ourselves a break and focus on what we are going to do about it.