I had a consuming fear of death as a child
Me too.
Sometimes really bad things happen to kids in my world and that's much harder to explain and gets more heavily edited.
Same here.
I... want my kids to understand that real violence is not at all entertaining and results in tragedy and loss to real people.
Yes, I think that's very important. I let my sons watch some cartoonish violence such as in superhero movies, but even DS3 is learning that it's different in real life.
This is such a YMMV thing. I would never allow DD to see this in a million years. She would be incredibly distraught by it. I am sure you know your child, but I would not recommend that most children see such footage. Images are hard to erase once seen.
I would recommend that children with extreme sensitivity to such things not be shown such footage. But I also feel that a lot of children could be intellectually prepared to deal with such things at a young age, and that some seeming sensitivity is caused by unnecessary sheltering (not in your case). If a child has been taught that life is full of unicorns and fairy princesses who dispense light and magic wherever they go, of course it's going to be a bit shocking to see people plummeting to their deaths. A certain intellectual progression has to happen, and I'd expect an adult sheltered from reality to be easily distraught as well without having been properly taught.
But for a child with the proper basis for understanding the significance of what she sees, it should be fine; my son didn't bat an eye at that particular footage, though he was very interested and appropriately sad for the people that died. Many children aren't provided with that basis at a young age, at least in the US, but it doesn't have to be that way. There's nothing biological which prevents it. Being emotionally ready depends much more on intellectual preparedness than physical maturity.
I agree WHOLEHEARTEDLY about full disclosure to the greatest extent that our kids can handle it. The reason is that PG kids in particular are likely to absorb more information about the events than we think that they've been exposed to. Something this awful is so vastly age-inappropriate for them to try to manage alone.
That's a good point, and a thought that has influenced the way I'm raising our sons. Complete readiness for a concept is one thing, and a need to put it into the proper light another. Our kids wouldn't find a diet of "age appropriate" fluff satisfying on an intellectual level anyway. They're like many kids in my experience, with a healthy appetite for the interesting, bizarre, and macabre. And, perhaps due to their giftedness, they have a tendency to ask big moral questions early and often, and to be unsatisfied with vague answers.
ETA: I think there's an oversimplified understanding of the emotional needs of children, and it's furthered regarding gifted children by an oversimplified set of beliefs about asynchronized development. A five year old student studying high school concepts is probably emotionally ready for those concepts if presented on a solid foundation, though she may show some normal five-year-old emotional lability.
