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

[Eglu]

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.

Lawnimp as you said I could choose not to read the newspapers, you could choose not to read my thread.

er your thread title leaves little to the imagination itself

yanbu!

i remember when kurt cobain died several newspapers ran front cover pictures of him feet first dead in the doorway of a room in his home. you could see the gun and parts of his body. It appalled me.

It also instantly became a horrible "tribute" t-shirt image. The front was the picture and the back was his suicide note.

So why click on it then

i also think the norway pictures are awful too. I don't want to see images of dead children in body bags. the event is distressing enough; there's no need.

and much as I love the guardian, i don't think that the rolling live blog on norway is at all appropriate.

er to contradict your view

Lawnimp It's not as though Eglu has linked the photo, you still haven't had to look at it.

And as you say, you are hiding the news you don't want to see, so you must have been expecting some negative press and I'm sure you can imagine what some of it might say. And since you were expecting it in some form, you can't blame Eglu for making you aware of it in this particular form.

On the other hand, perhaps Eglu has aided your plan to avoid it by warning you in advance of this photo and the fact that some papers have published it.

Plus, the thread title was clear enough but still without mentioning AW. It could have been a photo of any number of people given the tragic events of this weekend. Eglu is right when she says you could have ignored the thread and not known who she was talking about.

People are way too over-sensitive here. People have lost real loved ones here whether it be Amy's parents or parents of Norwegian kids killed. And people like BornSicky talk about being 'distressed' at seeing some images on tv. Im sorry, but no. Distress is losing loved ones, not seeing a pic of a coffin or whatever in the paper. Get over youselves ffs.

yes lol

And surely, contradicting Eglu's view would be to agree that such photo's should be printed.

But why would you do that when you have said you are hiding news reports to remain unaware of things like this?

dear lord

YABU... and agree with thisfantastic voyage. News is frequently shocking and distressing and a good news photo serves to enhance and illustrate the story. When we see Afghanistan casualties' coffins being taken down Wootton Bassett High Street on the news it must be distressing for the families. But should those pictures be suppressed just because it makes a few feel uncomfortable? No.

Yes, well, for a thread you wish hadn't been made, you seem to be participating in it a great deal while still managing to contribute nothing of value.

Wootton Bassett is different. It's not the point at which those people died and it's done in a way to show respect and honour (although not for much longer though, now they want to sneak people into Brize Norton after dark).

The Wootton Bassett reporting is respectful while still showing the tragedy.

The scrabble for a photo of AW in a body bag two hours after she was found dead has nothing to do with respect and everything to do with satisfying a ghoulish curiousity and shifting a few extra papers.

thisfantasticvoyage

It is distressing and distateful and disrespectful to print these images and furthermore it desensitises the viewer.

Photojournalism in the Vietnam era changed the whole way that news is reported. The advent of the internet added significantly to this too. We can have rolling news coverage of tragedy and watch it unfold with open-mouthed horror. We can turn personal trauma to rubber-necking soap opera, all in a click of a camera.

There is extraordinary power in images and we should be very careful how we wield it.

In another thread about the Norway massacre, a poster added a link to Charlie Brooker's Newswipe that is just as pertinent here:

YANBU

sorry not be of value but i still stand by my view that i wouldn't have known any thing about this report until i saw it on mn

YADNBU :(

thisfantastic.....who are you to judge what is distressing or not? Suggesting someone is being over sensitive is just crass.

BornSticky I think most people could rightly claim to be distressed at the sight of the Norway tragedy.

The sight of teenagers begging for their lives or desperately trying to escape, followed by images of their bodies, even if they are covered up, after their pleas were ignored, are distressing even if you do not personally know the people involved.

If any of us had gone to Camden Square, we would have seen the body being removed. Surely the issue at hand is whether the coroner/police ought to have erected some sort of screen to prevent onlookers seeing what was going on. If it's open to public view, surely it is going to be photographed an published.

I know what you are saying but I feel that the press should not be censored... Not sure what the answers are

Well i agree with op, but there appeared to be a huge number of people down there - ordinary members of the public. I bet they were snapping away with their mobiles.

I agree it's grim, but is it to do with our fear of death? Death is usually very sanitised these days and we're not used to seeing it anywhere but hospital. For me pictures like that are a reminder that we're all going to die - I conveniently forget about that most of the time. I am not saying that is why the press take those photos, but that is the reaction I get from them.

YABU.

People die and bodies are removed. When someone dies they don't just disappear in a puff of rose-scented smoke you know.

I am a regular, but have name changed for this. I am someone who has been bereaved, and the story made the local paper. There was no photo, thank God, just the copy. It was still one of the most dreadful things to read about "local man, 25...". He was someone that I loved, he was extraordinary, and there was none of that in the paper, just "local man".

This has nothing to do with the fear of death, in my opinion. And nothing to do with teaching everyone that an early death is very real and not at all glamorous. I completely agree that shocking photos have a place in journalism. In cases like Cambodia and Palestine, for example, where there were atrocities that were being covered up by the Government, it is makes sense to use photos as evidence of what is happening. Or if a government is glamourising a war, it makes sense to be confronted with the reality of it. But no-one is at all confused as to what happened here. We all know that she died.

To be honest, even if it was good for the general public to see the raw reality of her death, so what? It's her grieving parents duty to go through even more Hell (for the rest of their lives - this photo isn't ever going to go away and will crop up when they least expect it), in order to educate the public? WTF! It's different if a family have made a considered decision to try and make some good out of their child's death, that is their way of dealing with their grief. The Winehouse family have had no chance to make that decision, and if they choose to grieve in a different way, then that should be their right - all the weeping fans in the whole don't touch how they are feeling right now.

I do agree that our society has distanced itself completely from death. In my family, we view the bodies of loved ones who have died. I have done this four times (and I don't think that I'm that old yet). Our children don't go to funerals (I don't think that grieving adults should have to look after small children, they should use the funeral for their own emotional needs), but they are told what is happening, and they go to the wake. Personally, I think that that is the way to make dying a normal part of life, not through some stranger, however talented, but through the people that we love and that are part of our lives.