On page two of Friday’s Daily was a story about local and national radio stations changing their song playlists due to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

The stations’ program directors said they made the change, with the encouragement of station owners, in an attempt to be sensitive to the situation.

After a barrage of images of planes crashing into towers, people falling from buildings and loved ones sobbing uncontrollably, it seems the U.S. media has decided to take a content time out.

National networks like ABC and NBC are reconsidering their programming choices and Hollywood has pushed back the release dates of several new movies in an attempt to be more sensitive to the public pulse.

They are censoring their content in attempt to be sensitive to the public.

And they aren’t alone.

In the Sept. 12 edition of the Daily’s A&E pages, our cartoonist Carmen Cerra drew an illustration to accompany the “Last Band Standing” series, which featured Slipknot.

The illustration showed nine figures standing on a hill, holding different weapons, such as hammers, axes and knives.

The figures were skeletal, meant to depict the bands in the article. But the illustration that appeared in the paper was not Carmen’s original, which he had done the day before the terrorist attacks.

After watching footage of the attacks all day on Sept. 11, I asked Carmen to change his illustration because I did not feel it was appropriate under the circumstances.

So Carmen filled in the pile of bodies the figures had been standing on to create a hill. He also removed the blood that had been dripping off the weapons, leaving them clean.

If the terrorist acts had never happened, I wouldn’t have had any problem with Carmen’s original drawing. I might have even thought it was funny, considering the article’s tone and topic.

But after watching thousands of people’s lives end in front of my eyes, a pile of bodies and blood suddenly didn’t seem that funny anymore. Carmen agreed.

This doesn’t mean that it was an easy decision, and while I’m glad we changed the drawing, the fact that content was changed in an attempt to soothe our readers makes me a little nervous.

As journalists our primary goal is to provide the public with information that affects their lives in the most fair and complete way possible.

How that information positively or negatively affects our readers is a consideration, but making it available is more important.

So where does the media draw its line on what the public can handle and what it can’t? And how much should it care?

For me, it comes down to the facts. Carmen’s illustration was intended to embellish the article below it. It didn’t include any important numbers, detailed information or necessary visuals. The article was still in its complete form and getting rid of the bodies and blood would not have deprived our readers of anything they needed to know.

But if the illustration had been informative in any way, if it had contained graphic illustrations, I would have been hesitant to alter it, even at the risk of offending some readers.

Everyone interprets information differently, but it is not the responsibility of the news media to decide what is or is not appropriate information for the public. It is the responsibility of the news media to provide that information.

Whether or not people are happy it’s out there isn’t as important as the fact that it is available, accurate and fair.

Amid all of the tragedy, sorrow and fear surrounding Sept. 11, we need to be sensitive that our ability to handle the facts is being respected.

Andrea Hauser is a senior in journalism and mass communication from Edgewood. She is editor in chief of the Daily.