When was the last time you scrolled down your timeline on Facebook and saw a video that you watched, but were either shocked, terrified or disturbed by the end? It happens to me quite a bit because I am always waiting for something to happen at the end. When the ISIS beheadings of some American journalists happened, some news organizations decided to let the video roll on their websites without people on clicking it. Others had a disclaimer and some had the video at the end of the story where you could choose to click it.
In the mass media world today, videos are becoming very important for how people receive information. Moving images intrigue people, get them to watch a little harder and catch something that someone else may have missed. So many videos were taken by citizen journalists in Ferguson. These videos were often times shown on news organization's websites as well.
The ethics comes in when people can or cannot choose to watch a video. Not everyone wants to see the beheading of a person when they are scrolling down their Facebook timeline or going to a news website. It would be even worse if a child were scrolling and saw this. It just isn't ethical. People are starting to understand more with videos and if this is where news is headed then it must be plan for making readers and consumers choose what they want to watch.
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