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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

To think newspapers should not print pictures of dead bodies being removed from homes in body bags.

131 replies

Eglu · 24/07/2011 20:11

Daily Mail had a picture of Amy Winehouses body being taken from her home in a body bag. I'm sure others have printed it too.

I think it is awful for the family, completely insensitive and unnecessary to the reporting of the story.

I remember the same thing when Heath Ledger died.

OP posts:
Avantia · 24/07/2011 21:21

I suppose press would be aware because of social network sites , twitter etc .

No need for picture to be on front page .

thisfantasticvoyage · 24/07/2011 21:24

It's just such a facile argument. They print them because it helps them sell newspapers. In any case, she's dead anyway. I really cant see how things can be made any worse for her friends and family at this time than they are now. Surely, some pics in the DM will be the last thing on their minds? Wont they?

FreudianSlipper · 24/07/2011 21:27

YANBU

totally agree jsut no need at all and it is very disrespectful. so is the papers camping outside family homes when someone has died famous or not and then printing how much the home is worth, wtf has that got to do with anything

scurryfunge · 24/07/2011 21:28

Er, I think we realise why these photos are printed.....to appeal to the ghouls. It is an unnecessary element to the story. We all know ffs that that is how you are conveyed away once deceased. PM pictures would sell too but decency says no.

lawnimp · 24/07/2011 21:29

but you are posting about it so we all know now that the dm printed those pics, i didn't

you are contributing to the circus which will inevitably surround amy's life and death

ajaybaines · 24/07/2011 21:32

"It's just such a facile argument. They print them because it helps them sell newspapers. In any case, she's dead anyway."

You're absolutely right. Newspapers should be allowed to print whatever they like about dead people, they should be able to invade their privacy and the grief of their families in order to sell newspapers. It's facile to say that something shouldn't be done if it DOES sell newspapers.

Of course it's ok. That's why there has never been any kind of public outcry over newspapers invading the privacy of dead people or their families because it's OK, as long as they sell more newspapers.

Oh, wait..

Eglu · 24/07/2011 21:36

lawnimp it's not just the DM though, it is a lot of others. The DM just happened to be the one I spotted. I don't see it as contributing to the circus at all.

OP posts:
muminthecity · 24/07/2011 21:38

YANBU. Completely unnecessary and ghoulish to print that photo.

However, I think the Norway pictures might have a bit more relevance, I have no desire to look at them myself but perhaps seeing the sheer volume of bodies and devastation may help some people to comprehend the scale of the destruction and ruin caused.

vitaestbonus · 24/07/2011 21:39

I totally agree.

Also, Sky News (which I would never normally watch) showed really unnecessary footage of this and also the dead in Norway yesterday.

We were at some friends' yesterday and they had the tv on in the evening so it happened that all the kids there, ranging in ages from 5 to 13 saw this. It was just sensationalism and imo, totally inappropriate.

lawnimp · 24/07/2011 21:39

i do though, i don't really buy newspapers but read them online on a sunday occasionally

i wouldn't have known this existed unless you had printed this thread

FellatioNelson · 24/07/2011 21:40

I saw that too, though I didn't notice which paper it was on. Totally unnecessarily and ghoulish.

spiderpig8 · 24/07/2011 21:41

So are pictures of coffins ghoulish too? what's the difference?

fourthattempt · 24/07/2011 21:41

lawnimp
so ... because you didn't see it, the op shouldn't want to discuss it Hmm?

takethisonehereforastart · 24/07/2011 21:42

thisfantasticvoyage the photo's can make thinks worse. Her family might not even be aware of them right now, I know when my children died I was completely unaware of most things outside of my immediate grief for weeks.

My children died as babies, they weren't famous and I would hope that nobody took photographs of them in bodybags or coffins but even if they had done so at the hospital, for whatever reason, there's little chance of them being made public or of me seeing them unexpectedly years from now.

Amy Winehouse was famous. Her picture will crop up in years to come, probably the next time there is another tragic death of this type. And it will be on the internet forever.

If her parents ever feel the need to google her name and look at tribute sites or news articles of happier times that photo will be waiting for them somewhere at some time.

On the other hand they may have seen it today and it's become another weight of grief on their shoulders, knowing that their daughter had no privacy even in death, knowing that some shitty pap photographer made money from a shot of her body being removed from her home, knowing that every ghoulish freak in the world has seen it and so has everyone else, even if like the OP, they didn't want to.

This disrespect to her and her family is enormous and as this thread has shown, they cannot justify it by saying it's what the readers want because for the most part it isn't.

You can't say "just don't buy the paper if you don't like it" when we are still confronted by the images in the shops and on TV. And many people have their paper delivered so would not have the choice but to receive that one particular copy.

In fairness, I can't honestly claim to know what Amy's parents will feel about the photo, but I'd bet my house that they aren't delighted to see that particular picture of her in the press. And as a bereaved parent I will say that I myself and the other people I have since met who have suffered the loss of a child or children tend to feel incredibly protective of those lost children and do feel hurt by slights to their memory, which is what this photograph is in my eyes.

You want the world to remember the perfect, beautiful child you loved and that doesn't include having a pack of rabid photographers fighting for the money shot of their body in a bag.

lawnimp · 24/07/2011 21:43

don't Hmm me!

I am saying i wouldn't have known the pic exsited until this op

i block alot of news reporting as it's so crap

it's a lesson i learnt long ago

auroraday · 24/07/2011 21:44

:( sorry to read that post.
The media is out of control - even after all that has happened, they are still effectively free to print what they like in the name of "public interest" - it stinks, I agree

exoticfruits · 24/07/2011 21:45

Horrible.

bibbitybobbityhat · 24/07/2011 21:48

But what are you saying lawnimp? You didn't see the picture, you block a lot of news reporting, you wouldn't have known about this photo until the op started a thread about it. And ... ?

Op is saying she wants to be able to read newspapers online without seeing this sort of ghoulish ott reporting. Is she not entitled to say that? What has it got to do with your reading habits around the news?

LyingWitchInTheWardrobe2726 · 24/07/2011 21:48

You're not being unreasonable but I think actually it's a very good thing. Young people are seeing the tributes, the flowers and candles and the weeping and wailing and they're thikning that maybe it's not such a bad thing to be a legend in your own time.... the pictures of the body bag nullify that a little and as a parent, I for one am very glad of the balance as horrible as those bags are to look at.

The girl who died of the heroin overdose, I can't remember her name, but her parents asked that her death pictures of her purple, mottled and in rigor with a needle sticking out of her, be printed and posted... well done that mother. She's done more to bring the ramifications of addiction home than any 'tribute'.

It's not ok to do drugs, they will kill you, death is no cool and nobody but your family will remember you. Dead is forever. That's the message that our children need to have dinned into them.

Horrible though it is, those grotesque pictures of Amy in a body bag are far more valuable than pictures of her in her 'heyday'.

ajaybaines · 24/07/2011 21:53

I get your point Lying - but the girl who died of a heroin overdose - Rachel Whitear, I think? Her family consented to the pictures being shown.

AW's family haven't.

takethisonehereforastart · 24/07/2011 21:58

It was Leah Betts I think Lying

I agree to a point, but the difference is her mother gave her permission for the picture to be used, the Winehouse family haven't.

takethisonehereforastart · 24/07/2011 22:00

Ah, Ajay you are right, Leah Betts was the girl in the hospital bed, shocking photo's again though.

LyingWitchInTheWardrobe2726 · 24/07/2011 22:00

Amy Winehouse was in the public domain, very much so. Rachel Whitear wasn't. We're always being subjected to pictures of coffins and bodybags, it doesn't really make a difference who is in them from a media point of view.

I think our media is generally scum, pandering to bottom-feeding morons but if I can think of anything positive from their disgraceful behaviour, it's that bodybags bring home the true pointlessness of drugs.

lawnimp · 24/07/2011 22:02

i am just saying i am trying to avoid the negative reporting of amy's death and am not find it too hard

until i come on to mn

LyingWitchInTheWardrobe2726 · 24/07/2011 22:03

I remember seeing a German magazine of my aunt's - 'Das Neue Blatt' or something like that... pictures of Princess Grace of Monaco in her coffin. Grotesque but obviously aided publication massively. :(

I do blame scummy journalists but what of the people who buy that kind of rubbish?