Would You Run These Photos?
The image of a woman sitting in anguish amid rows of babies killed in the tsunami disaster was the single image that brought home the devastation of the tragedy for me and many others. Yet there is legitimate debate over whether the New York Times, among other papers, should have run the AP photo. The Associated Press Managing Editors is reporting the results of a survey of readers and journalists on this and other riveting photos of tragedy that we have witnessed. The survey gets an important discussion going. Check out the photo and survey results. Media scholars have taken up some of these issues; in was in such works that I first came to realize that U.S. and British media are more likely to run closeups of the mangled bodies of victims in Third World countries than they are to run photos of victims right in their backyards, particularly white suburbanites. It would be seen as too intrusive. Knotty questions here. I can't help but feel that if it's okay to run photos of victims from afar, it's right to do it here. But what happenes when one's own circle of family and friends are the victims whose bodies are displayed on Page One? Then the answer is not so easy, which is journalists need to run through an ethical tree of reasoning before running any such pictures.
8:52:30 PM 
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