Vulgarity and Newswriting.
"Graphic details don't always make a story more compelling - there are times when all the news isn't fit to print. Still, there are times when graphic details are necessary to tell a story."
This is a question that I have poured countless hours of pondering into. Not really, but it does make a good point. Different people are offended by different things. For instance, a few years ago, beheadings of American Soldiers were aired on CNN and other news channels. This was extremely offensive to me, but to others, it may not have been as vulgar. I guess that's what the people at CNN had to do: decide if that piece of news was important enough to air on national television, despite it's vulgarity. It's a hard decision to make, because there is such a fine line. As for the Lorena Bobbitt story that Chapter 5 used as an example, I think people may have been offended by seeing the word "penis" in the newspaper, but there was no way to get around it. She cut off his dink. No beating around the bush on that one. I guess I have to agree that it's in the editor's hands whether a story goes out, even though it may be "offensive."