Last Updated: May 26, 1999
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What would you do?: Editors give their
solutions to a vexing problem
Photos that provoke firestorms: Bodies
Seldom do stories generate the outrage, the emotion,
the intensity that provocative photos do; whether a newspaper has a policy
or not, news judgment is vital in these cases
By Kathy Silverberg
Here’s the problem
Alerted by a fisherman, rescue crews are called to a nearby lake where
they recover the body of an unidentified person. A photographer for your
newspaper gets a shot of the body being brought out of the water. The photo,
planned for publication, does not show the body close enough for it to
be recognized, but it is clearly a human body. Before you go to press,
you learn that the body is believed to be that of a young woman reported
missing about a week before. She is the mayor's daughter. Do you run the
photo?
Nothing seems to generate irate calls to the newspaper more than photos.
Columns and columns of type on a controversial topic will go without a
hitch, but run a photo that is the least bit provocative, and readers will
voice their complaints. This is particularly true if the photo is taken
locally.
For a variety of reasons, human tragedy seems to elicit the greatest
emotional response, and photos of bodies often are considered objectionable.
Some newspapers have policies concerning death-scene photos, but invariably,
the real-life situations do not track the policy. All sorts of news considerations
come into play.
In that vein, we asked three editors, Tom Inman, editorial page editor
of The Greenville (S.C.) News, Skip Perez, executive editor of The Ledger,
Lakeland, Fla., and Rick Rodriguez, managing editor of The Sacramento (Calif.)
Bee, what they would do if faced with this run-or-not-run dilemma.
Tom Inman
Yes, I would run the photo. It’s both legitimate news of a rescue operation
and an invitation for readers to sympathize with the victim’s family.
It’s news for being a photo of a scene in which emergency workers are
doing their job. The body being removed from the lake is the focus of rescuers’
concern, not the dominant element in the photo.
A close-up photo of the body that made rescuers and the rescue scene
secondary would be inappropriate, as both unduly shocking and also incomplete
photojournalism.
Sure, some readers would complain. The mayor himself might be one of
them. I would plan ahead to listen to any reader complaint patiently, thanking
callers for caring how we do our job. If I thought the mayor would be one
of them, I would call him with my own sympathy first.
Skip Perez
I would not run the body photo based on your information.
First, The Ledger’s photo guidelines state that running "photos of dead
bodies are generally frowned upon." Those guidelines allow for exceptions
depending on the "immensity of the news event." In all cases, body photos
must be cleared with a senior editor.
We’ve run photos of bodies covered and we’ve run body photos when a
major news event was involved. But this particular illustration wouldn’t
meet our "immensity" test.
Certainly, most capable photographers would provide a variety of more
tasteful photos to consider that would still capture the moment.
And maybe this goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway: The best
photo (and it’s not an award-winner) is the one of the woman as most people
would remember her.
Rick Rodriguez
First, we’d probably need lots more information to make the decision.
For example, we’d have to take a look at the photo. We don't automatically
run photos of dead bodies brought out of the water. Is it too gruesome?
Does it tell the story? Can we defend running the photo?
Next, how good are the sources that the body is that of the mayor’s
daughter? Have the mayor and the family been notified? Those two questions
are interrelated. If the family has been notified, we’d be sure of the
sources. We would not run the photo without being sure the family has been
notified. We don’t believe that a family should learn of a loved one’s
death when picking up the morning newspaper.
If all of those key questions have been answered — that the photo met
all of our standards, that we were sure that our sources were correct and
that the family had been notified — we would run the photo.
Silverberg is executive editor of the TimesDaily, Florence, Ala. Mail
your quandary to P.O. Box 797, Florence, AL 35631 or e-mail timesdly@
hiwaay.net.
