Comments:

c.c. - 2004-08-25 21:29:32
i spent a weekend in washington d.c. recently at a college newspaper conference. the most interesting seminar i attended was a discussion led by national geographic magazine's text editor, peter porteous, about the ethics of publishing graphic and controversial images. he used the example of a reporter who covered a massacre of innocents in the congo. the reported ultimately decided against publishing the photos he took of the victims' corpses. the discussion point was engaging: is it always necessary or beneficial to publish a graphic or disturbing image? at what point does the image detract from the content of the story? a lot of students expressed that they felt their duty was "to serve the public's right to know," therefore, they should always publish images that told the story. while i agreed that that was a central duty of a journalist, i felt that "the public's right to know" was not itself a worthy justification for publishing. as journalists, our first responsibility is accurately reporting the events and circumstances. photos and other images can lend important perspective, but should not be relied upon to tell the story. i'm still not convinced that an image, however graphic, should accompany a story. but i do see the importance of the impact of a photograph on the reader's understanding.
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c.c. - 2004-08-25 21:30:44
i should ad that i'm not a journalist myself. i just sell ads. but still.
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Laura - 2004-08-25 21:56:59
Welcome to the blog, c.c., and thanks for a nuanced reply. When the Detroit Free Press published photos of the burned corpses hung on the bridge at Fallujah, on the front page, above the fold, they got a firestorm of criticism but many supporters as well. The images shocked me and are still with me, but I support their printing them. In such cases--in my view--short of sensationalizing a story National Enquirer style, the pictures don't detract from the content--they are the potent content. They're hard to take for someone who leads a sheltered life like me--but they do more to slam the truth into a reader's face then any text description (e.g., the photos I've been looking at coming out of Darfur). Just my opinion. Thanks again c.c.--hope to see you again.
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raymond - 2004-08-26 17:51:58
A picture is worth a thousand lies, that's for sure. Many of us are thankful to have access to M. Brady's photos, lynchings in Alabama, what the GIs found at Buchenwald, shots in the head in Vietnam, and so many more. While photos are the result of someone's choices, someone's point of view, they also stand alone as a record.
One of the curiosities of old newspapers is the gory detail employed to describe murder and mayhem. If one were hit by a train in 1905, the newspaper would describe the carnage. Photos weren't readily and instantly available to print so prose colored purple.
It's one thing to say that "bombs were dropped" but quite another to show a photo of mangled corpses in rubble. It makes one grip tax dollars more tightly and think harder in the voting booth.
Photos of the dead were generally more common in the past. It was a genre, like death masks. Now we must stay young until we are dearly departed and even then lie wrinkleless in funereal slendor.
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raymond - 2004-08-26 18:00:43
where's the spel chekker?

slendor=splendor

i am no longer slender in splenditity
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Laura - 2004-08-26 18:41:02
I agree, and the "bombs were dropped" paragraph is very well said.
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