“While there is perhaps a province in which the photograph can tell us nothing more than what we see with our own eyes, there is another in which it proves to us how little our eyes permit us to see.”
– Dorothea Lange, American photographer
Images evoke visceral emotions in a way words cannot. They relay information instantly, they pack an immediate punch, and sometimes they knock us back from wherever we stood, or sat, when we saw them.
A news photograph that planted such a wallop on some Courier-Journal readers was printed on the front page of the July 18 newspaper.
It showed, in sharp, full color, a man who had been wounded in a double suicide bombing in Tel Aviv on July 17. The bombings killed three people and wounded another 40 people, and occurred one day after another bombing near a Jewish settlement on the West Bank killed seven people and wounded more than 17 people.
The man in the July 18 picture was so bloody, and photographed at such an angle, that it was difficult to tell who or what was being depicted unless you looked close and hard. And the photo was such an articulate expression of the cost of violence that you didn’t really want to look close and hard at it.
But there it was, part of a Page 1 main news package that included another smaller photo, a story and information about related stories inside the news section.
The picture showed, in a way that words could not, the human toll of suicide attacks. That is why the photographer took the picture, that is why the news service (Associated Press) transmitted it and that is why The Courier-Journal printed it.
But it was simply too much for dozens of readers who contacted the newspaper to register their dismay, disappointment and, in some cases, disgust with the decision to print the photograph, or to print the photo in such a prominent position.
A sampling of reaction, which was immediate and nearly monolithic (very few called to thank us for printing the picture):
* “The news out of the Middle East is important, but we don’t need shock value to show us how critical the issues are in Tel Aviv.”
* “I have small children. I had to hide the paper.”
* “My 9-year-old saw the paper and said, ‘What happened, Mommy?’ ”
* “The picture was entirely uncalled for. I’m extremely disappointed.”
* “The picture was completely exploitative. It was like The National Enquirer, which I don’t subscribe to.”
* “The picture was unnecessarily graphic and gratuitous, even for a subject of such gravity.”
* “In the 12 years I’ve taken the newspaper, I never saw anything so sensationalistic.”
* “It was inappropriate, and it wasn’t even in our country.”
* “You just went overboard with this.”
* “It was a terrible picture. I can’t imagine who thought this would sell papers.”
Arthur B. Post is the managing editor of The Courier-Journal. After discussion among news and photo editors, it was Post’s decision, his call, to print the picture on the front page of the July 18 edition.
He is correct when he says there are a number of journalistic reasons that support his decision:
* This sort of terror is a reality in the world, the driver of an ongoing and tragic news story that never seems to get any better.
* After several weeks of relative calm in the region, there was a renewal of the violence that has bedeviled the Middle East, especially in the past year-and-a-half.
* Violence is not an abstraction in today’s world, but we run the risk of having it become an abstract quality unless we show things for what they are — in this case, the results of a suicide attack.
I will add another: It is a newspaper’s mission to bring news that readers don’t necessarily want to read or see. As Post points out, we make judgment calls every day about what goes into the newspaper and what is left out of it.
Because what we do is always a work in progress, we do our job better on some days than others.
As did some of the readers I heard from, I think we erred in running this particular picture on this particular day and with this particular story — but for a different reason than those expressed by them.
There is a place and a time for a newspaper to print graphic photographs of troubling news events. We have done it before and we will do it again.
But I think we have to be careful and wise about choosing the occasions we print such pictures. The bar for publication should be pretty high. And I don’t think this news event, as sad and awful as it was, met that standard.
Neither, it turns out, does Post.
In hindsight, he said, he didn’t think this was the story with which to press a painful point — bringing bad news home in an indelible way.
“It was a bad choice,” he said.
I want to end this column at the point I started. With the aforementioned observation of Dorothea Lange as context, I offer a gentle nudge to those who’d rather not be confronted with the worst of bad news:
Though much of the world is a good and benevolent place, there are dangers and there are dangerous people. We cannot afford to be too far removed from what those dangers are, and from what risks they pose. As we have discovered, myopia about our place in that world does not protect us. We must learn that we cannot afford to live, in a twist on Lange’s imagery, in a province in which a photograph proves to us how little our eyes permit us to see.
Pam Platt is public editor of The Courier-Journal. Phone her at (502) 582-4600; e-mail: pplatt@courier-journal.com.
