This is a story about powerful photographs. One was a picture of a mother and child relaxing on a hot May day. Another was of two young Californians posing with their congressman in his Washington, D.C., office. The other showed the body of a suicide victim.
These photographs — all published in The Bee — raised issues of the newspaper’s responsibility to the truth, good taste and honesty.
The mother-and-child photograph generated the most comments from readers because several felt The Bee’s decision to publish might endanger other people. Some readers were angry at the mother, and some at The Bee. All were concerned for the child.
An Associated Press photograph ran in The Bee Tuesday on Page A16, alongside the continuation of a story about hot weather. It showed a young mother with her 3-year-old floating on an inner tube in the river at Discovery Park. The picture did not reveal exactly where they were or give any indication if the water was a puddle or a torrent.
One reader said the photographer should have warned the mother her actions were unsafe or called the police. Another believed the picture should have carried “a big warning label” telling readers floating on the river is dangerous.
“It was irresponsible for you to print the picture,” one reader said. People who are “not very smart” might see it as a lure to a dangerous activity, she explained.
Managing Editor Joyce Terhaar responded: “We can’t make assumptions about whether this is a dangerous situation or not. The photo simply does not tell us.”
Assistant Managing Editor Bob Casey, who is in charge of photographs in the paper, added: “We are always careful with photographs that show dangerous behavior that could be copied by others. In this case, any level of danger was simply impossible to assess.”
“It is a killer river,” another reader insisted. That’s true. In 1977, a drought year, a total of 14 people drowned in local rivers according to park officials. The average is six deaths each year.
But it is not illegal to swim or float in the river, and elected officials who have the power to shut down the river to swimming have not done so.
Park officials have not banned swimming in the river, but encourage caution for the thousands who do so every year. Warning signs are posted at the river park telling the public the bottom is uneven and the current swift and cold. It is recreation with some risks attached.
Comment: Had the story and photo been about river safety, instead of cooling off on a hot day, including information on hazards would have been appropriate. But to change the caption to match an opinion — not universally shared — would not be appropriate.
The Bee has reported on river hazards several times in the past and undoubtedly will do so again. Had The Bee constantly ignored the hazards, readers might make a stronger point about responsibility.
As long as the public has access to rivers for recreation, and the newspaper promises to reflect “Life. Captured Daily,” pictures of people enjoying themselves will continue to appear. Unfortunately, so will those occasional pictures of families grieving for someone lost to another river tragedy.
A missing person
At the time this is being written, Chandra Ann Levy, a young woman from Modesto, is still missing. She disappeared several weeks ago in Washington, D.C., and the family and friends are worried and asking for help to find her.
Her parents provided police and the media with a studio photograph of the young woman that was widely distributed, and later published in The Bee.
At least one reader thought the glamorous photo was inappropriate. No one would ever recognize her, he suggested, from that picture.
Another picture was published on May 17. Levy’s friend Jennifer Baker provided that photo, one taken when Levy was visiting Baker in the Washington office where Baker later worked for Rep. Gary Condit (D-Ceres). The two young California women had posed together for a picture with their congressman, and it showed them as typical constituents grinning with their representative.
Baker asked that the picture not be changed or cropped. She was worried that some news organization might trim her out of the picture and make it appear Levy and the congressman were alone, which was not true, and fuel rumors that there was some connection between the two.
A Modesto Bee senior editor agreed that was a reasonable request, and passed the photo along to the Associated Press with the proviso the photo should not be changed. Then AP distributed the picture around the nation with the warning included in the caption.
Sacramento Bee editors saw the warning, agreed it was a reasonable request to avoid distortion and published the complete photo as provided, giving Baker credit as the source.
Assistant Managing Editor Bob Casey, who oversees graphics and photos in the paper, had no doubts that was the proper way to handle it.
But then the distortion Baker worried about happened. The New York Daily News ran the photo showing Levy alone with the congressman, citing NBC as the source and accompanied by a story that said unidentified Washington television stations were sources that the two had been seen together. The next day the police said that was an unsubstantiated rumor, but The Daily News did not report that.
At least one Sacramento television station ran the photo with Baker trimmed out, though it is not known if they understood the impact.
By mid-week Michael Doyle, a Bee reporter in the Washington bureau who has been covering the story, told me, “There is a bit of a ‘race to the bottom’ mentality, because local TV and the tabloids will print anything….” Rumors and distortions end up being spread on the Internet, he said, “creating a disparity with what they see in the more responsible Bees.” In this case, The Bee was careful to deal with what was known, be wary of rumors and handle the photo honestly.
The Bee resisted the temptation to join the “bottom feeders,” as it should have. Unfortunately, the sloppiness and dishonesty of a few in the media always come back to haunt every journalist, even those who try to do things right. This is the sort of stuff that convinces the public all media are dishonest.
Too much death
The Bee overstepped the bounds of good taste, one reader protested, when it ran a photograph of the body of the man accused of multiple murders in Stockton.
The man had committed suicide at a Lodi cemetery after threatening police with a concussion grenade. As part of the report on the bizarre incident, The Bee ran three photographs and a map. One of the photographs, on Page A24, showed the partially obscured body of the man as a bomb squad member checked to see if he was alive or dangerous to officers.
The Bee’s standard policy is that is does not normally run photographs of bodies, or nudity or other things which would generally offend readers, unless the news value overrides the normal sensitivity to such subjects.
In this situation the editors felt the photograph was so compelling they chose to publish it because it captured the tense moment and the end of the manhunt.
“The news warranted the coverage,” Casey said.
