Consider it a little holiday gift: Today you get to be the editor.
It is Sunday afternoon, and you are the last word on what will go in Monday’s paper. Among the day’s most significant stories are Al Gore deciding not to run for president in 2004, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott losing support because of remarks he made at Strom Thurmond’s 100th birthday celebration; and four boys dying in the icy Merrimack River in Lawrence, Mass.
You suggest those are all front-page stories and your staff agrees. The Gore and Lott stories promise to have a significant impact on national politics. The children’s heartbreaking deaths promise to capture the interest of the nation.
Then the photographs begin arriving from the Massachusetts tragedy, and the decision gets a little trickier. The most compelling of the pictures show a firefighter pulling a child from the icy river. The pictures show in a series of dramatic images what the story says in words.
The question you, as editor, face is whether to run that picture. The newspaper’s standard procedure is not to publish photographs showing dead bodies unless there are compelling reasons to do so. But it is not clear in the photograph whether the child is dead. He is identifiable. He is not disfigured. He looks like a child who is asleep.
So you call the Lawrence, Mass., Eagle-Tribune to find out the status of the boy. He is, you are told, one of the boys who died. The paper there, nevertheless, used the photo on its front page.
You know the philosophy here: The photograph should not run.
But you also know the same guidelines have been overruled before. It wasn’t until several weeks after the picture was taken that The Post and Courier published a devastating photograph of a U.S. soldier’s dead body being dragged through the streets of Somalia. When it ran here, it accompanied a story addressing the controversy over who the soldier was and whether newspapers like The Post and Courier were right to refrain from publishing it.
There was the picture of the baby in the arms of a firefighter after the federal building bombing in Oklahoma City. The baby died.
You think of Pulitzer Prize winning news photographs and realize that some of the most powerful have shown death. The embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya. A woman trampled in Haiti. And, of course, the chilling photo people remember 33 years after the fact. It showed the impact of a bullet being fired, execution style, into the head of a Viet Cong prisoner by South Vietnamese Gen. Nguyen Ngoc Loan in Saigon.
What’s your decision? Do you use the photograph? Do you use it on the front page? Do you use it on an inside page?
Would it make any difference if the person being pulled from the river was an adult rather than a child?
Would it make any difference if the boy had not been identifiable in the picture?
What about if he were being pulled from Breach Inlet here instead of the Merrimack?
Does the picture deliver a safety message to readers that mitigates the policy? Exercise caution around rivers.
The Post and Courier staff elected not to run the photograph. Editors agreed that there were not enough compelling reasons to override the newspaper’s policy in this case. It is important to balance the presentation of the news with readers’ sensibilities.
The Eagle-Tribune staff decided the value of running the picture outweighed its negatives.
Among the reasons for the decision were:
- The picture authenticated the scene of the tragedy, showing how thin and hazardous the ice was.
- It showed a firefighter putting his own life at risk to attempt a rescue.
- It could serve as a teaching tool for parents.
- It captured the human impact of the tragedy and response.
The Post and Courier’s decision did not meet with criticism. Instead of the action photo, the paper ran one that showed an eight-year-old being comforted by her grandmother after her friend died in the accident.
The Eagle-Tribune’s decision did spawn criticism. Readers there filled telephone and e-mail lines with charges of insensitivity and sensationalism. The paper responded by publishing an explanation of its decision.
“There are times when complete reporting of the news involves the use of graphic photos. They serve as the history of a community’s anguish.
“Photos of traumatic events tend to etch in people’s minds the enormity of the news, causing them to reach out their hearts in sympathy to the victims and their families.”
You’re the editor today. What would your decision be if you were at The Post and Courier? What about if you were at The Eagle-Tribune?
Let me hear from you and I’ll follow up with your thoughts in a column in a few weeks.
