SHOULD KILLING HAVE BEEN SHOWN ON BBC NEWS?

I'VE watched relatives die and I've seen all of my three children being born.

But, until last night, I'd never seen a cold-blooded shooting like this on TV news before.

Therefore, was the BBC right or wrong to show the footage or not?

Consider the following:

1. I could imagine what happened next when they initially froze the film so I didn't really need to know what followed.

2. Watching the news live, I decided I didn't need to see his death so I looked away - even though I must have seen tens of thousands of people being tortured, knifed and shot etc in the thousands of movies I've seen in cinemas.

This was real life coming in to my own home and it wasn't the same thing at all as watching a film in a cinema.

Then I realised many others would have seen it and that I ought to have seen it to understand how they might feel.

Having not watched the killing initially, how could I properly question whether it should have been screened at all?

3. Easy. Using the wonders of Sky+ I was able to instantly rewind live TV. I then watched the killing again. And again. And again. Three times in all.

4. By now, I was desensitised. Once I'd seen one of the last great taboos, repeat viewings were less of a 'problem' than watching it the first time. Which is another good reason for saying we needn't have seen it at all.

5. Of course, Dwayat was wrong to have done what he did. But, maybe next time, we'll see a killing of someone who doesn't quite deserve to be shot quite so much as he did. And the next time after that it might be a bit less after that.

Recent history also tells us that people can be unjustly killed. By our own highly-trained police. To broadcast such a slaying before the truth emerged would then be at what cost?

6. Before long, every Tom, Dick and Harry with a phone will be sending over images of people being attacked left, right and centre. Rather like the current tidal wave of knife attacks, we might then wonder where it will ever stop.

7. But what about President Kennedy, you might say. How many times have we seen his assassination in the back of his car?

Here, several qualifying factors come in to play - a) he was the leader of his country; b) who did it? and c) the pictures weren't very clear.

In contrast, I doubt the BBC would have screened the shooting of Jill Dando if someone had filmed that.

8. BBC reporter Tim Franks looked pretty shocked just telling the Dwayat story as any normal person would be.

But you can imagine that BBC executives in London, after doubtless discussing all of the issues, would have been pretty excited about showing it in the interests of 'informing' us what is really happening in Jerusalem.

I would argue that there is a difference, though, between showing a killing in cold blood and investigating the horrors of mankind, from the Holocaust to today's Zimbabwe, for example, and then painting a bigger picture in the interests of all.

9. Although we were warned the BBC was about to show the killing, I bet many viewers doubted that we really would be until it was too late to do anything about it... especially when the footage was paused in traditional manner just before the main event.

How many people possibly just have switched on at that precise point, perhaps with youngish children still up?

Wouldn't they all then have seen something they might never have wanted to see in a million years and without warning?

There might have been hundreds of viewers who fell into that category in this trigger-happy, remote-control world of ours.

10. Conclusion: should the Beeb have screened the killing of Hussam Dwayat?

Guilty as charged.