Increasingly, modern warfare is not a conflict between the armed forces of opposing states, but are either civil wars, often involving undisciplined and unpredictable militias, or unequal conflicts between a state's armed forces and a part of its civilian population. But the prominence of such wars in the current television news agenda also raises an important issue of editorial policy.

How much real violence can news programmes include in their bulletins is one of the most vexed issues in television journalism. Editors have to make a judgement between the dangers of sanitising war and violence and the need to be sensitive to the composition and feelings of the audience.

There are conflicting rights and responsibilities in this area. Viewers have the right to an unsanitised account of what is happening in the world, but they should not be expected to see material that is so distressing they cannot watch it. The victims of war and violence have the right to be portrayed with respect - but they also have the right to have what has happened to them reported. The reporters and crews in the field have to know that the pictures they often take considerable risks to shoot will not be lightly edited out of their reports.

It is a debate which has become even more complex and important in recent years with the shift of news viewing away from "adult" viewing hours and into the early evening. There are still important news programmes on their air after 9pm on ITV, BBC1 and BBC2. But the biggest audiences for television news are, increasingly in Britain, as in the United States, to be found in the early evening.

This presents serious dilemmas for news programmes, since British broadcasting's regulators operate a family viewing policy which places a responsibility on programme makers to take account of the fact that many children may be watching television before the 9pm watershed. News is included in this policy - although ITN has agreed and the regulators agree that parents also have some responsibility for their children's viewing and that some news programmes are not suitable for young children.

Family viewing policy means effectively that what can be shown varies significantly through the day. The horrific massacre at Ahmici in Bosnia in 1993 where the charred bodies of a Muslim family were found by British peacekeepers is a case in point. The only pictures we felt we could show on the lunchtime news could not do much more than hint at the full horror of what had happened. It was only on the more adult programmes, Channel 4 News and News at Ten, later in the day, that viewers, with an appropriate warning, were able to see for themselves the scenes which had so memorably moved and distressed the soldiers.

A recent example where sanitising a news item would have destroyed much of its point was an incident in Dili, the capital of East Timor, after the referendum. A militia gang was chasing a BBC journalist, Jonathan Head and an East Timorese civilian. Both men were caught, thrown to the ground and beaten. But while the Indonesian officer directing the militia intervened to save Head, his men killed the East Timorese with machetes in front of the cameras. What had appeared at first to be hooliganism had suddenly crossed the line into state-sponsored murder. Not to have shown at least part of the killing would have distorted what actually happened - and carefully edited versions were broadcast on the early evening as well as late evening news programmes.

But important pictures do not always get the coverage they deserve because of concerns over taste.

In January this year, Sorious Samura, a freelance cameraman in Sierra Leone, ventured on to the streets of the capital Freetown as the rebels entered the city. Despite the risks, he persuaded first the rebels and then government troops to allow him to film some of the most atrocious violence against civilians ever recorded on videotape. He filmed men having their chests and heads blown open, wounded men in the death agonies, and young children being brutalised. Some of his images were intransmittable - but I believe much of it could and should have been seen around the world.

Samura's incredible courage has rightly won him awards. But very little of his footage has ever been seen on television news - Fergal Keane included some of his pictures in a report for the BBC Nine O'Clock News, and the ITN's Channel 4 News showed an extract in a recent item on the question of why the pictures he risked his life to shoot have scarcely been seen on the world's news programmes. For many broadcasters they were, apparently, too strong. Ironically, when he received the Mohammed Amin award at the recent News World conference in Barcelona, the organisers screened an edited version of his material as shown on Australian television which was so sanitised it had lost almost all its impact.

For many of the world's major television news programmes, Sierra Leone has been a largely unreported war. Had more of Samura's pictures been seen around the world he believes it might have changed international public opinion - in the same way as over the past 10 years pictures of suffering in Bosnia, Kosovo, Rwanda, East Timor and Sudan have had a major political impact.

It is not hard to find fictional violence used for entertainment purposes in British television both before and after the watershed. Early evening soap operas regularly introduce murder and rape story lines to boost their ratings. ITN's experience has been that very few viewers complain about the real violence in news programmes if they are satisfied that the story warrants its inclusion. We have always believed that so long as the images are selected with care and appropriate warnings are given, it should always be possible to show television news viewers an unsanitised version of news events when there is an important public interest.

There are encouraging signs that the regulators accept this view. When Channel 4 News did some of the Sierra Leone report, and one viewer complained the Broadcasting Standards Commission, under its new chairman, Lord Holme, rejected the complaint on the grounds that the issue was of public interest and had been preceded by clear warning.

Far from international coverage on British television news fading away, as some pessimists have predicted, there have now been three major crises this year - Kosovo, East Timor and Chechnya - where extensive television news coverage has played an important role in the course of events by drawing international attention to the sufferings of civilians. News editors do not relish bringing scenes of war and violence into living rooms, but we must continue to do so when we are convinced that the overriding editorial significance of the story justifies it.