Now, we may all not be valiantly digging through garbage for our jobs as journalists, but whether we are publishing or not, we are all faced with ethical challenges throughout life. In the instance of Thursday’s lecture, we took a look upon graphic images of victims of the MH17 crash. This dealt with the never ending battle of “how far is too far?” when trying to determine whether to publish a picture or not.
I refer back to the picture of the dead baby Nicole ran after the horrendous Oklahoma City bombings. I echo Nicole’s sentiment in that if there was a lasting image to be displayed after all of that, that picture was on the money.
Regarding the crash, the only picture that I would’ve ran is a large scale picture of the bodies in a group. I say this because the terms “airplane crash” and “mass death” should be enough of a wake up call that we shouldn’t need a visual image of a singular person that was killed or even one that was still in his/her chair. However, if there was a picture to be run, a shot of a group of bodies should hammer home a lasting image about how horrifying this event was. I attribute desensitization as a big reason as to why a shot of unidentifiable bodies won’t completely freak people out, while at the same time open their eyes a little more to the situation.
My last comment will refer to this thought of a “lasting image.” If you remember the picture of the man falling head first from the World Trade Center, it’s a hard one to forget. This is a true challenge for journalists in my opinion. How to provide a lasting image for the reader without crossing the line of ethics.