This column was originally published in Afrikaans on 15 May 2004.
How can journalists maximize their function of truth-telling in news reports and photographs without causing harm? This was one of the questions discussed last week at the annual conference of the Organization of News Ombudsmen (ONO) in St. Petersburg, Florida.
While news media worldwide are being swamped by gruesome and often repulsive pictures of the war in Iraq and the international battle against terror, the task of editors is becoming more difficult by the day to explain news decisions to readers and viewers without giving offence.
This dilemma in editorial offices is increasing by the day and in the recent past editors had to make difficult decisions on whether pictures depicting the brutality of war and terrorism should be published, or shown on television. Who does not remember the dreadful but touching picture of an Iraqi boy who lost both his arms after an American attack? Or the photograph of victims and a torn-off piece of bloody limb lying next to a train at Atocha station in Madrid (taken by El Pas photographer Pablo Torres Guerrero), after bombs by terrorists succeeded in ending Spains involvement in the Iraqi war?
Then, at the beginning of April, there were the pictures of a jubilant Iraqi mob, dancing underneath the charred bodies of four American contract workers on a bridge in Fallujah, strung up to the steel framework by their executors.
And this past week, the scenes of the American Nicholas Berg, decapitated on video by members of Al-Qaeda.
South Africans are not unfamiliar with these types of horror scenes: when the first wave of necklacing murders hit the townships in the 1980s, citizens of the country were filled with abhorrence, and the SABC and newspapers were vehemently criticised because they brought this reality of the struggle against apartheid so visually into the inner sanctums of South African homes.
Editors dont have an absolute recipe how material like this should be presented. The 54 ombudsrepresentatives from 13 countries who gathered at the Poynter Institute the leading international media research and training organization were also not united in how pictures which contain horrific elements that depict the brutality of war, should be presented without watering down their news obligations to inform.
The pictures of the train scene in Madrid and the execution of the contract workers on the Fallujah bridge, are typical examples of how newspapers and television stations differ in the way they present potentially abhorrent news scenes. The murder of Berg also emphasised these different attitudes among editors. Some newspapers only showed the chilly and bleak scene of Berg sitting in front of his executioners, while others showed the moment he was being decapitated. Die Burger decided to publish, like most media, only the first-mentioned scene en not to show the moment of execution.
An important point that Kenny Irby, Visual Journalism group leader of the Poynter Institute, emphasises, is that the mere publication of a picture such as this is not enough. The context of the decision to publish the picture must preferably be explained to the readers on the same day the picture appears.
When you ask good questions, you make good ethical decisions. An important consideration is whether the photographic content is presented as editorial story- telling or illustration, says Irby. He and Bob Steele, Poynter scholar for Journalism Values, emphasise the following four key considerations for editors in deciding whether to use contentious pictures:
- Is the photograhpic content what the photographer saw in the viewfinder? In the Madrid bombscene, newspapers used a variation of techniques to publish the picture of the same scene that depicts victims lying next to the train. In the picture published next to this column today it appeared without any changes or cropping in full colour on the front page of Die Burger on 12 March a mutilated and torn-off bloody limb can be clearly seen in the foreground. The Spanish newspaper El Pas published the same picture in a similar way. The British daily The Guardian also published this picture, but chose to change the red colour of the bloody limb digitally to soften its impact. According to Ian Mayes, readers editor of The Guardian and vice president of ONO, the newspaper carried an explanatory correction three days later because the decision to change the picture, was in contravention of the papers ethical code. Digitally enhanced or altered images, montages and illustrations should be clearly labelled as such. Another British daily, The Daily Telegraph, digitally removed the image of the torn limb from the picture, whereas The New York Times cropped the picture in such a way that the limb was not shown. Time followed a different strategy by putting large text over the image of the limb. Die Burger decided to publish the picture unchanged according to its set of values and its ethical code which state that the paper is dedicated to reporting news truthfully, accurately, honestly and fairly. Its ethical code of conduct also states: Because we realise our integrity is damaged by manipulation we’re against any form of this, including: (a) digital manipulation in so far as it changes the message and/or meaning of a photograph.
- Is the content being changed in ways beyond basic image quality corrections? The examples of The Guardian and other publications given above emphasise the importance of ethical guidelines according to which editors can make decisions. According to Bob Steele a sound ethics code or ethics policy articulates a news organizations core values. He refers to an article by James Collins and Jerry Porras in the September-October issue of Harvard Business Review in which they write the following about about core values: Core values are the essential and enduring tenets of an organization. A small set of timeless guiding principles, core values require no external justification; they have intrinsic value and importance to those inside the organization. Steele emphasises that quality codes begin with this articulation and weave the core values into the content of a document such as the ethical code of a newspaper.
- Is the illustration clearly obvious to the reader/viewer? There is no doubt that the Atocha station picture could be abhorrent to readers precisely because it is so gruesome. Often a picture has the potential to shock so strongly that it should not be published in isolation without explanation.
- Is it necessary to place the image in context with additional text for disclosure? One of the techniques that newspapers for example used to contextualize their decision to publish the picture of the charred bodies hanging from the green bridge at Fallujah, was to explain it on the same day the pictures appeared. Thus the Dallas Morning News and the Orlando Sentinel on 1 April carried a long report on page 2 to contextualize their decision to publish it. The Oregonian explained the decision on page 1 and 2. For Die Burger it would have been better to have done the same contextualizing on the day the picture of the Atocha train scene with the bloody torn limb clearly visible, was published on the front page.
After the Fallujah-attack on the contract workers editors had a wide range of choices to make from pictures that varied from dancing Iraqis around the workers burning vehicle of the four victims, men with placards that read Falluja Semitu American under a picture of a skull, and others. Yet, the three most horrifying pictures were the one of the charred bodies hanging from the bridge (taken by Khalid Mohammed of Associated Press), a picture of a burning corpse in which the distorted hands of a victim appeared desperately above the flames, and a picture by Ali Jasim of Reuters in which some members of the crowd repeatedly attacked the charred remains of their victims with shoes and a pipe. (Compare the graphics by Hanlie Deichmann elsewhere on this page.)
The war in Iraq is nowadays often compared to the Vietnam war. Two of the best known pictures that still define that war, was that of Brigadier General Nguyen Ngoc Loan executing a Vietcong officer on a street in Saigon (photo taken in 1968 by Eddie Adams); and the picture of the naked 9-year old Kim Phuc fleeing the scene of a 1972 napalm attack. The picture was taken by Nick Ut. Although these pictures still shock readers today, they remain historical documentation that illustrates a facet of the war. Without these pictures our interpretation of the war would have been poorer.
According to Irby it is important that readers and viewers are always taken into consideration in the selection of pictures because the aim of a free press is to inform citizens and to maximize the telling of the truth while harm is minimized as far as possible.
Adam Kushner, assistant managing editor of The New Republic, does not accept the argument by a vice president of MSNBC who told The Wall Street Journal MSNBC did not want the worst Fallujah pictures to be shown because We have standards and beliefs … We are gatekeepers. According to Kushner the duty of reporters, producers, and editors is not to soothe their consumers or protect them from cruelty. It is to convey facts – and the most important facts of this week happened to be hanging bits of blackened flesh and a man with a pipe. Often during wartime, the facts are disquieting; at times, they are revolting.
Kushner is correct: an instinct to protect viewers may never be stronger than an instinct to inform. If this had happened during South Africas state of emergency in the 1980s, nobody would ever have known about the necklacing murders in our townships and the despicable results of apartheid.
