It has gotten to the point that we are going to have to start putting those warning symbols up before the newscasts because some people think that what we are showing is too graphic or too violent.

Probably not a week goes by without some viewer complaint about how some video we have shown in a newscast is too graphic, or that we didn’t warn folks so they could get their children out of the room.

The news isn’t necessarily for children.

I don’t mean to sound insensitive about it, but I’m tired of apologizing for real life being too real for some. The news is about what happened today. In some cases, it is not going to be pretty. And I’m not comfortable deciding how much to “sanitize” the words or pictures to make them family friendly.

There are countless scenes of graphic destruction and tragedy in the aftermath of the Haitian earthquake. There will be more to come. Many of these scenes will be tough to watch, even for those of us who have spent a lifetime looking at images that are too graphic to talk about.

And frankly, we aren’t even in the same neighborhood as the brave men and women who put on a uniform everyday to serve in the military, law enforcement or emergency services. Every one of those folks deserve a special bit of appreciation for the things that their eyes have witnessed.

The point of this modest rant is to remind you that the news isn’t always supposed to make you feel better about everything. Sometimes the world really is a scary place–even though you might not live in that part of it–be it across town, across the state or even across an ocean.

But it is critical to know what is going on in our world. All of it.

And maybe, just maybe, if enough people get upset enough about what they see on the news sometimes, they’ll get involved enough to do something about it.

Which would be the kind of “good news” story that we all would probably like to see more of.