When they opened Monday’s newspaper, readers were confronted with a large picture on the Local section cover showing a 16-year-old boy peering into the barrel of a handgun. About two dozen people called to say they were appalled and astounded.
“I think it’s absurd that you ran that photo,” said Dr. Frank Whitesell of Amery, Wis. “I take care of kids who get damaged that way. It shocked me. The first rule is that every gun is loaded.”
The picture contradicted safety rules that people work to instill in young people, said callers who teach gun-safety classes for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, the St. Paul Fire Department and the Minneapolis Police Department.
Other callers were parents who feared young children might mimic the picture, not knowing it accompanied a staff column with an important message that real and toy guns look alike to police officers in threatening situations and the results can be deadly.
“What were you thinking? Who OK’d this decision? Wasn’t there someone along the line who said, `No, this is not appropriate?”’ asked Dotty Loida, a North St. Paul licensed home day-care provider.
In the newsroom critique session Monday morning, some editors also raised objections. The concerns prompted a review of the process that had led to this photo’s publication.
In short, the newspaper published this powerful image without an internal discussion that normally would take place in deciding about potentially controversial, sensitive pictures or stories.
Some of the editors who handled the photo did not anticipate how it might affect people, while others wanted to use a strong image to draw readers into the column. The writer never saw it, nor did Managing Editor Vicki Gowler, who was the top editor on duty Sunday but was not called at home to consult about the photo.
“We have a process, and it failed us this time,” Gowler concluded.
She emphasized to the staff last week that she and Editor Walker Lundy need to be involved in decisions such as this.
“If we are considering content that we think could shock or disturb or offend readers, we need to take extra steps to make sure that there is a good reason for using it and then make sure we present it well,” Gowler said. “In this case, we should have published a more detailed explanation of why we were using this photo and how it fit with this story, if it did.”
What readers encountered was a page layout with the photo at the top showing the boy pointing the gun at his face he did not have a finger on the trigger. Underneath was a caption explaining he was examining the pistol during a police program on how officers have a hard time telling the difference between real and fake firearms. Below that was the headline, “The Real Story on Fake Guns.” Also on the cover was a photo illustration of 10 real and fake handguns, labeled by type.
The photo’s path into the paper began when staff photographer Joe Oden and public safety columnist Ruben Rosario visited one of Minneapolis Police Officer Ron Reier’s presentations for ninth-graders at Washburn High School.
Reier said he tries to make teens realize how powerful guns are and how easily real and fake guns can be confused.
At the end of his class, Reier allows students to handle the demonstration guns some real, some fake as long as they do not point them at anyone or pull the trigger.
“Every one of these guns had been totally deactivated,” Reier said last week. He praised Rosario’s column, but pointed out that it and the photo caption failed to mention that the guns were inoperable, which might have helped.
Reier said he usually watches the students closely but was talking with Rosario while Oden shot photos.
Oden said when one of the boys began examining the barrel he immediately knew it would make the best picture for drawing readers into the column. But Oden didn’t recommend it to the photo desk. “I didn’t think we would have run it, because it would be too controversial,” he said.
Two photo editors, however, did recommend the photo as part of the package. The news editor Sunday night, Sherri Hildebrandt, said she relied on their judgment and did not look closely at the photo until she opened the earliest edition off the presses at about 11 p.m. “I thought, wow, this is really big. We are going to get calls tomorrow.”
The editors also noted the photographer did not indicate if the gun was real or fake, but they did not make calls then to find out. (For the record, it was a real but disabled .45-caliber handgun, Reier said.)
On Monday after the night editors discussed the controversy, Hildebrandt took a call from a reader. He said his first reaction was “holy catfish” because his brother was injured as a child when he looked down the barrel of a loaded pellet gun. “I’m sure I’ll remember his call when faced with another such photo decision,” she said.
Dean Vatnsdal, the student in the photo, said he took some good-natured ribbing but wasn’t bothered by the photo display.
“It said right on it that I was examining it,” he said. “I was looking down the barrel to see how it was deactivated, because they had tape over where the bullet goes in so you couldn’t open it and look through it that way.”
Dean’s mother, Amy Vatnsdal, said, “I thought it was a weird picture to pick, because you shouldn’t look down the barrel of a gun.” But people who read the column would understand the setting was safe, she said, adding that her son has hunted and learned gun safety from family and friends.
Which photo would Dean have used? “Probably that one, because it was the most attracting and people would read the column.”
Bob Steele and Keith Woods, ethics specialists at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies in St. Petersburg, Fla., reviewed the story and photo, which I faxed to them.
The photo startled Woods. “I thought you had captured a moment in which a child was trying to kill himself,’` he said.
The problem, Woods said, is that the photo radically distracted from the column’s message that kids shouldn’t play with any gun, fake or real. If editors wanted to salvage the photo, he suggested they could have added a line above it indicating the teen was handling the gun in the wrong way and made sure everything else in the package was tied to safety messages.
Steele would have a problem using the photo at all.
“It still would be about a young man pointing a weapon in his face, which is not what the story is about,” Steele said. “It takes a very small element of this police officer’s session and puts the focus on the wrong thing.”
That’s the essential point.
The disturbing image didn’t support the column’s message, and it needlessly caused deep concerns among thoughtful people from different backgrounds and perspectives.
