Sites like Liveleaks are very hypocritical, they pretend to show videos for "freedom of speech" while instead their main purpose is simply to satisfy their viewers' voyeurism. Cheap thrills are the main reason for viewing this kind of material - and don't pretend to be someone better, you've looked up that kind of stuff yourself for precisely that reason just like I have. People who watch this material only want to satisfy their curiosity and get the thrills from it.
That's also why Truffault once said "There’s no such thing as an anti-war film." (There are exceptions, like "Taxi Driver", and perhaps also "Deer Hunter" and "Killing Fields", but these are rare.)
Such things indeed play a vitally important role.
I stand by what I said, people almost solely look up these videos to satisfy their personal morbidity and voyeurism. It's the same reason why there are always many bystanders around accidents who stare at the victims without doing anything.
On a side note, there is also a false dichotomy in your argument. I haven't said that the press should never show such pictures or videos, just pointed out that it generally violates ethical standards of the press and it has always been hotly debated when exceptions should be allowed. Sites like Liveleaks are nothing more than trash in comparison.
I think it did, it did massively. On other hand keeping people oblivious to dire facts "because people will be outraged" is how you get Belgiums happening. "This can't be happening here" people were saying, despite a very credible threat, news of which were deliberately silenced, and played down by Belgian government of the time for the same reason. And when they woke up to the sight of German tanks on the streets, it was too late to agitate anybody. Belgian mobilisation failed because no men went to barracks because of prior normalisation of the situation.
> Showing things like "Palestinian children blown to bits" will first and foremost escalate a conflict and instigate more violence.
It's often when you do escalate conflict, and bring it to its logical end, when people can't simply stand, and do nothing, you do get things done.
Ireland could've probably been English Gaza by now if Irish simply decided to lay down, endure repressions without inflicting pain upon British, and thus normalising the situation.
When you have to scream your lungs out, you need to scream your lungs out.
If you don't, this is how it gets to outrageous situations like women being raped in broad daylight without any men around doing anything about it, and to dead silence of passer-by's.
Before, I thought something like this can only be possible in societies of China, or Russia, but to my most visceral disgust, it does now happen in the West too.
You're completely deluded if you think opinion blogs and copy&paste news aggregation sites make you better informed. On the contrary, they are just a modern form of the "Chinese whispers" game.
There is no "consent of awareness of events" and frankly that would be a nightmarishally exploitable situation. It is a rationalization of being afraid of retaliation usually from being sued.
How on earth would Liveleaks be hypocritical for saying it is for free speech even if voyeurism is the main purpose? Upsetting as it may be to you it needs actual contradiction of itself to be hypocritical. Accusing it of being a cynical facade is the the closest casting in a bad light stance.
The whole fucking point of free speech is recognizing you don't get to decide how other people think! It can be both things at once.
Better person is a matter of interpretation and context - there is never a guarantee that /any/ action will make somebody "better" to any framework much less the fuzziness of defining better.
Just like other media, Liveleaks could pretty much make you think anything they want you to think. The fact that they are more radical in their editorial decision (but they did not show everything either) does not mean that they influence people less. On the contrary, the more emotionally upsetting the content, the easier is to influence other people's thinking.
But I bet you're one of those guys who think everyone else is influenced except for you.