Taste vs. Public Debate in Journalism

[JPresley]

There was a fatality in yesterday's St. Patrick's Parade here in Montreal where a young spectator climbed onto the hitch between a truck and a float and then fell underneath the float. He had been drinking, as were many of the spectators. In Montreal, drinking alcohol on the street while watching a parade is illegal, but it is well known that the St. Patrick's parade gets a free pass. There is security to keep people off the street, but no barriers. The St. Patrick's parade normally lasts a couple of hours, and as might be imagined, crowd control gradually becomes sloppier as the parade progresses, with spectators in a doubtful state of sobriety mixing with floats pulled by trucks.

After the incident, various Canadian news agencies published photos of a body covered by a yellow tarp. E.g., the second photo under the photo tab in . . .

http://www.montrealgazette.com/life/crushed+death+Patrick+parade/2682053/story.html

On some websites anger was expressed about the photos being published with at least one statement that there is no possible justification for publishing such a photo. There is no blood or gore visible, but I can understand the family might be upset.

However, the shock value of such a photo might be what's needed to start a public debate on whether, for example, additional crowd control measures such as barriers should be implemented or whether the Montreal police should enforce existing city ordinances in the normal manner for this parade. There are analogous situations where large organizations, most notably governments, make decisions that result not in one death but in many, and the taxpayers deserve to know what unpleasantness they are paying for. There are also situations where such a photo will change nothing and is simply gratuitous. Small kids and families of victims read newspapers, surf the internet and watch TV.

Where are the lines?

 

[JPresley]

I don't know the context for the Pulitzer photo, but one look conveys the whole message. The Montreal Gazette photo makes it obvious someone died, but you have to read the article to know it had to do with the parade.

The photo of Kim Phuc fleeing her napalmed village is horrifying but might have shortened the Vietnam war by at least a little. The child under the sheet is chilling in a bit more understated way. I'm not sure many newspapers would publish something like that now.

The photo of the child accident may not suggest immediate and concrete ways to save other lives, but has our taste improved, or have we been building too many safe surburbs full of people like ourselves and purged of any unpleasantness?

 

[Rayt]

If my local paper decides to publish only photos of cute fluffy animals I will probably start buying USA Today which is in fact already pretty close.

 

[JPresley]

I don't think Weegee specialized in cute fluffy animals. I suspect the Daily News in New York still doesn't. But lots of people read USA Today and nothing else.

Interestingly, people seem more bothered when something is published related to their next door neighbor than with a horrific scene involving strangers in a foreign land.

 

[not_in_good_order]

The world is a pretty harsh place sometimes. There is no reason that we should be shielded from it all the time. I guess Robert Frank should have left the photo titled "Car accident--US 66, between Winslow and Flagstaff, Arizona" out of The Americans--just think how many people have been offended over the years!

 

[Pablito]

As the song sez: "It's interesting when people die, give us dirty laundry."

BTW, the 1959 Pulitzer prize for photography:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rllayman/339691516/

and 51 years later, the image is posted on Flickr and no one at RFF asks the photographer's name. If it was really a Pulitzer winner, I certainly am no expert but I don't automatically believe what I read on someone's Flickr.

 

[JPresley]

More or less the reason I'm starting this thread is I was two blocks from the fatal parade incident when it happened. All I knew then was that the parade had stopped, an ambulance had shot by, and that police were sealing off the street. While I was heading to the subway I saw one altercation where someone was screaming "You're an animal" and a few similar statements at a guy with a small point-and-shoot. Security intervened before any punches were thrown, but this shows the kinds of emotions possible in this situation.

I was never close enough to the incident to even have the option to take a photo, and I doubt that I would, but photojournalists really don't have a choice in a situation like this. It's their job.

 

[40oz]

There's a line between "newsworthy" and "good taste," and sometimes the only way to know where it is is to cross it. In this case I think it's fine, the body was covered and a death at a parade is kind of shocking. I think it's important for people to know someone died at the parade. Actions have consequences, and whether the photo was required to deliver the point, it's been done. We can't really undo that.

Personally I slow down for accidents because it seems prudent. I have no desire to see a bloody mess, but I have even less desire to hit emergency personnel or vehicles, nor to suffer the same fate when I strike the same patch of black ice. I kind of get irritated when TV news parks a van at the scene then comments on the "rubber-neck delay," as if they aren't the ultimate rubber-neckers.

 

[Arjay]

Let's face it: We all feel the urge to stare if we become withness to a scene like that. Wheter we actually give in to the urge is up to our education and our impulse to actually stop to help. Helping is ok, rubbernecking and obstructing those who really help isn't.

Photojournalists are acting on different grounds: They represent our curiosity and our interest in participation, and their work is legitimate. We have a right to know, but we as simple bystanders don't have a right to follow our own, individual voyeurism.

So we delegate our curiosity to the media, and I think this is perfectly ok. If journalists display what they see in an inappropriate manner, that's another thing: I mostly trust them to know how to avoid obstruction, but sometimes they will not meet my criteria for decency. But that's a secondary problem, since it is always my individual decision what I want to see and what I will refuse to look at.

 

[JPresley]

If I saw an accident like this in the process of happening and was quick enough, I would have taken photos though on the off chance they could help police determine what happened.

There seemed to be about two to three professionals with press passes per city block downtown, but virtually every spectator had a camera.

 

[wgerrard]

Editors make decisions like this every day. That's what they're paid to do. That site's editor decided to post a long shot of the scene, a shot that provides context, adjacent to the story. Readers need to click through to see the closeups of the covered body. I don't find those shots offensive, but they would not have appeared in a print newspaper due to space limitations. However, whether or not they add news value is debatable.

 

[JPresley]

Regarding actual print usage, the first photo in the sequence was printed front page at a very large size in the Montreal Gazette. I think the body under the sheet was web-site only though. This was a huge story here. The remainder of the parade was cancelled and the crowd sent home.

This was a huge story in the French-language newspapers too, but at least one combined a headline about the incident with the usual photo of happy paradegoers.