http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80Eh06rabuI
LONDON: The BBC has stopped showing video clips which show Virginia Tech gunman Cho Seung-Hui, who shot 32 people dead before killing himself, brandishing guns and railing against his victims, it said Friday.
In a blog entry on the corporation's website, Peter Horrocks, head of television news, said it would stop showing "moving images" from the video, which also showed Cho putting a gun to his head and a knife to his neck.
A spokeswoman for the BBC confirmed that the decision was implemented at
midnight (2300 GMT) Thursday.
The footage was taken off air after a day in which it featured prominently on its News 24 channel and terrestrial bulletins.
"From 24 hours after our original transmission, we will not use moving images or actuality from the video," Horrocks wrote.
"Stills from the video may be used but we will exercise restraint over excessive use of the more alarming images."
A spokesman for Sky News, the main competitor to BBC News 24 in rolling news, said it would continue to show the video but reserved the right to change this decision later.
"There's no change in our editorial line - we exercise editorial judgement as a story develops," he added.
For the BBC, Horrocks said the corporation had tried to "contextualise" clips with comments from experts about the killer's state of mind.
"We have not replayed large chunks of the video endlessly on News 24 or BBC
World," he wrote.
"We are well aware of the concern that the video may lead others to copy or emulate him... however, given that the video is already widely available, we had to judge whether withholding the video from BBC audiences was the appropriate thing to do.
"We decided that playing short clips, responsibly contextualised, could aid understanding of the story."
In practice, the story was dropping down the news agenda across Britain's media Friday as families held the first funerals of victims and Virginia's governor named a panel to probe Monday's massacre. - AFP/yy
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