Has anyone else noticed how many news items start with:

Ivan - and today Ivan moved onto XXX and the death toll is *** .  Nothing about the damage or individuals left behind in the wake of these hurricanes - paddocks and homes 4' deep in mud, others under 10 inches of water with nowhere to get the horses out of it.  The airline company who was airlifting hundreds of dogs out of the area after their owners left them behind during the evacuation and all the rescue centres were full.
~~
In Bagdad today xxxxx happend and the death toll was ***
~~~
There was a multi-car pile up on the Mxx today with a death toll of ***
~~~
The worst recently was Beslan.  Every other sentence (at least) included the words "death toll" and as the possible numbers rose the commentators sounded almost gleefull - I found this almost as sickening as what was happening.
If the people over there actually managed to go a sentence without mentioning it they were prompted by the people in the studios.

Listen carefully to the news and you will see what I mean.

I agree, I hardly 'watch' the News anymore, preferring to read papers and on the Net.
What was even more frightening was Tuesday, when my 5 yr old son came home from school saying how sad it was about all those children, parents and teachers that were not let out of school, didn't have food and drink, and all died, (presumably Beslan).  Apparently they had been told this story in assembly - did they really need to be told about that?????

Hi Charliepud

I imagine many of the children had heard about what when on in Russia and could have been scared that it would happen in their school.  In these circumstances it can be best to try to explain it in a gentle way to children so that they don't just talk about it amongst themselves and scare each other silly. If they are all told together, such as in assembly, then they all have the same information.  Sometimes adults, in wanting to protect children won't talk about it in front of them and if they have heard some bits then children will always expand on it and try and scare each other.