A large color photograph printed in a prominent spot in last Sunday’s Bee — showing a Haitian man slashing another with a machete — hugely offended dozens of readers.
Once again an old journalistic issue is joined: How much violence and gore should be graphically displayed in a so-called family newspaper?
The picture was on the front page of the Forum section to help illustrate a story reprinted The Nation magazine. The article told how the CIA continues to collaborate with and arm Haitian paramilitaries, including the “Front for the Haitian Advancement and Progress” (FRAPH), a group the author called a “hit squad” opposed to President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
In the photo — taken in September 1994 by a photographer for a French news agency — the machete is wielded by a “FRAPH thug,” as the caption stated. His victim, identified as an Aristide supporter, has raised his arms in futile defense. The fresh slash wounds on his forearms are clearly seen.
Calls from distressed readers started early Sunday morning and continued into the evening and beyond. “Offensive,” “disgusting,” “inappropriate,” “disturbing” were common descriptives I heard on my Phone Mail.
Russ Albright said, “It’s OK in the tabloids, but not in The Bee.” Michelle Thomas said the picture had given her bad dreams.
Glen Andrade of Orangevale said, “I had to hide the paper from my kids.” Laura Biddle of Mount Akum said, “It was gruesome.”
Stephen K. Figler of Placerville canceled his subscription, saying Forum had been a “must read” for more than two decades. but, he said, the photo was a “chilling, unexpected and unwelcome experience.” It was “low sensationalism” unworthy of The Bee.
Whether all of these readers who called had read the article that went with the picture I don’t know. Because of the volume of calls, I couldn’t return them all. But several readers volunteered to this effect:
“Yes, I know the story was important. But I got the message well enough from the text; I didn’t need to see the picture.”
The Bee staffer who made the decision to run the picture is Bill Moore, Forum’s editor. I shared the criticisms with him and others and asked him to comment:
“I can understand why many readers were disturbed about this photo,” Moore wrote me in a memo. “But the article was also shocking, and the photo helped to corroborate that. That’s why — after considerable reflection — we selected it.
“The writer reported that a 7,000-member death squad, armed by U.S. intelligence agencies, was operating in Haiti. The photo left little room for doubt: Thugs were preying on unarmed civilians. It was an exceptional article that merited exceptional illustration.
“We appreciate the concerns the readers have expressed. But if readers don’t like what they see, they can always turn the page. Do they really want newspapers to withhold or sanitize unpleasant pictures and facts? Our job, after all, is to tell people what’s going on.”
My opinion: When I first looked at the picture, I, too, was mildly shocked but not repelled. It did exactly what it was intended to do: impel me to read the text. Afterward I thought, this is what my tax dollars are doing in Haiti?
The Bee usually is pretty chary about running gory news photos (some would say even timid), and generally that’s a sensible course.
This particular gory photo was found not in the regular news pages, but in a section produced by the wholly separate department that puts out the editorial opinion pages. I think the distinction is important.
Forum is a weekly collection of commentary and analysis of a wide array of social issues and current events. You could say Forum is a cafeteria of ideas, some reprinted from elsewhere, some specially commissioned, some off-beat, some riveting, some boring, some discomforting, some highly revelatory — as the Haiti story certainly was.
The idea, of course, is to provoke thought and perhaps even discussion among mature readers who might not have been exposed to these themes and revelations elsewhere.
True, some of these revelations may turn out to be repugnant. But with due respect to the objecting readers, given the context and location of the picture, I can’t fault Moore.
Averting our eyes from social unpleasantries is sometimes a larger disservice to ourselves in the long run than confronting them directly. This was one of those times.
