NYPost runs pic of teen shooting victim motionless in the street

A serious question here:
And I don't know where I fall on this particular photo, I am still deciding on how I feel about it.

But, are we reacting differently because the subject is lying on a street in the Bronx and not in Chechnya, Senegal, Yemen, Chad or the West Bank?

Are there different standards?
Is there a "close to home" quotient that humanizes it more and angers us more when, in reality, these type of photos are printed from time to time, but when the picture is from somewhere else in the world, it doesn't bother us as much?

 

Yes. Sorry, I was vague with that question.

 

I think the fact that they are innocent victims comes into play for me. She did not commit a crime, but her life is splashed across a news paper.

But then again I now realize that the great fire fighter picture from Oklahoma City falls into the same category.

 

Excellent point. Some photos, such as the one with the Vietnamese child running naked tears everyone up.

 

I remember reading a story about how how almost no papers/magazines ran any photos of people jumping off the Towers on 9-11, even on the first day, but especially not even a few days after. They sort of disappeared, even though a substantial number of people did die that day in that horrific way. So it is interesting to think about all those factors, such as the ones Colin mentioned, and the age, and the location and the fact it is the Post, and why can we see a dead body but people jumping were off-limits in the wake of a national tragedy, etc. Not sure what my point is.

Growing up, there were papers in the area and the state that got reputations for being papers that would show gruesome photos, from car accidents or whatever. But then I look back at old newspaper photos from the 1940s and 1950s, when papers were running large, detailed pictures of crumpled bodies in cars, murder victims, etc., and think, How could they get away with that stuff back then?

 

i think things have swung too far in the direction of cleaning things up. This is a newspaper, the news is not always pretty, but you infantilize a population when you can't even show a flag-draped coffin. There have been a few days when I was stunned by a photo in the paper, such as a U.S. soldier cradling a small Iraqi girl whose mother's blood still covered her outfit, but that photo brought the reality of the war closer than all the shots of armored HumVees on the road to Basra.

 

I am still haunted by this photo some 45 years later. The cop in background just asked the poor guy for a "light"

 

Great point. And we on the copy desk do try to think about this when we're picking wire photos.

About 5 or 6 years ago, there was a photo of an Iraqi boy who (if I remember correctly) lost both of his arms due to a bombing. The stumps that were left were bandaged. We had a huge newsroom debate about whether or not to run the photo, before my managing editor at the time weighed in and said, "This is what's happening, this is what happens in a war." We ran the photo, and I think we were right.

But to echo others, it's always a tough call when it's a child.

 

I know we have to be sensitive, but, we run photos of dead Iraqi's, afghans etc. all the time. I have seen photos of burn victims on India and Pakistan.

Do we only show people we don't know or are foreigners? In the interest of news, if the photo is powerful and not gratuitous, then it should run. That's a major news event, and the impact of the photo is too powerful not to run. It's a tough call because you don't want to upset family, but we aren't in the business to make people feel better.

I certainly wouldn't run something grotesque, and the photo has to add something to the story, but in the end the victim is news.

 

It made me think of the Pentagon trying to ban photos of U.S. war wounded or dead in Iraq and Afghanistan.
You can't not run one and run another.

 

I assume other idiots like you think that's funny?

 

You'll have to ask them.