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Coverage causes guilt and sorrow

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GRAPHIC media coverage of the New Year disaster in Lan Kwai Fong has caused a wave of guilt among people who were not even at the tragedy, and a record number of calls to hotlines.

The Hospital Authority's 24-hour service at Queen Mary Hospital had received only seven calls by Saturday, but delayed reaction to the tragedy resulted yesterday in 24 more callers asking for help. Five were referred for further psychiatric help.

Volunteer psychologists manning the Hongkong Psychological Society hotline had received 37 calls by late yesterday after only 13 hours of operation - more than it had received on the hotline set up after the Tiananmen Square crackdown in June, 1989.

Clinical psychologist Miss Mary Lee Wing-ming said only about 10 callers had been at Lan Kwai Fong during the disaster.

Many of the rest had been traumatised by media coverage of the tragedy which left 20 revellers dead and more than 80 injured.

''Most were disturbed by media coverage, particularly television coverage showing corpses, bruised bodies and people with bulging eyes,'' she said.

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