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.

Sorry, that was long. It's something that I feel strongly about. :(

It wasn't Leah Betts - hers was an ecstasy related death, not heroin.

It's not just the press, you only have to attend any car accident to see the general public with their phones out photographing and filming the scene including extracation of passengers.

Those people haven't given permission and the public don't know if they are seriously injured.
What on earth goes through peoples minds to make them think that this is an acceptable form of behaviour?

when a celeb dies there is no need for a photo like that. however with all the bloodshed all over the world i welcome that it covers or papers and magazines. that way we see it, feel it and hopefully one person might get one step closer to changing it.

we are too distanced from death

leah bets died from a water related death, she drank too much water which messed up her salt levels and she died.

I would like to point out that I never said I was distressed by the image. I'm aware people die and body bags need to be used. My concern is much more for the family and friends of the deceased than for myself.

Also yes members of the public who went to Camden would have seen it and some would have taken pictures but they have chosen to be there. I did not choose to come across it on the internet or in the newsagent.

To the people who mentioned coffins, I really find it difficult to understand that you can not see the difference between somebody being respectfully carried to their resting place in a coffin and a body bag.

Namechangedbereaved I am sorry for your loss. It is very hard to hear or read things that reduce the person you loved to a few words that in no way really tell the world who they were.

**

I think that's a big part of the objections people have here to this photo. To her family, she is still the woman they loved, to the media and a few ghoulish spectators she was a body in a bag to be gossiped about and photographed for morbid curiousity and few £££'s from the tabloids.

Eglu is quite right, it's not about hiding from the real facts of death, but anyone with an ounce of sense would be expecting her body to be removed from her home in a body bag. We don't need to see it happen and her family don't need to see it happen.

And it's not about censorship or freedom of the press. Nobody has censored the press, they were reporting her death well before her father was even aware of it. And no doubt they will (try to) have many reporters and photographers at her funeral, unless her family are very lucky with their security.

But there is such a thing as self censorship and the press and media are proving more and more often that they do not have this ability. Yet they are hypocritical enough to lambast others in the industry for going too far.

But Lying, once the picture of Rachel Whitear got into the public domain the BNP used it in their literature AGAINST the wishes of the family.

I just think, is it so hard to have a bit of respect for a bereaved family? Why are everyone else's needs (newspaper bosses, kids who might want to take drugs, ghoulish voyeurs) considered more important than there's? It's just basic courtesy to take into account the feelings of people who have been most affected by something like this.

theirs

Rachael whitear died from a heroin overdose, her parents agreed to have pics of her lying dead on the floor being published, Leah betts took ecstasy then drank too much water after being given advice to drink lots to stop dehydration which is common when taking ecstasy and dancing, her parents showed pics of her in a coma in hospital

YANBU

I was watching the news with my DS on Ch4 or 5 (can't remember which) at about 5pm and it came on there, showing her being carried out of her house. Totally inappropriate and ghoulish.

I used to be a news reporter and have done quite a few 'death knocks' (as they are charmingly known in the industry) - six in one day on the day of the Paddington rail crash.

I think it's pretty morally indefensible to knock on a bereaved family's door in the hope of a story - except for one thing. That it's important that if the paper are going to write about it, loved ones are informed and given the opportunity to contribute, so that the paper is not just writing about 'a 25 year old man,' but a real person who lived and was loved.

When I did it, it was surprising how many families wanted to talk. Out came the photos and the stories, they really wanted to emphasise to the wider world, that this was their loss, this fantastic person.

I'm not sure about the morality of it all. I was doing my job and would have hated to have written a piece without contacting/warning the family first.

NormanTebbit - I'm not sure how I feel about it, to be honest. The trouble is that I know how doing a job day in a day out can harden people to very emotional events - just like the nurses who make casual comments to miscarrying women, because it's the fourth they've seen this week, but of course to the women herself it's devastating. So I worry that it isn't done with sensitivity - the very term "death knock" makes me angry. And when you are newly bereaved, you just aren't thinking straight. You do want to tell the world how special that person was, but you're not thinking about how you'll feel about it in a year's time, in 10 year's time, because you're in shock and you're just not capable of thinking that way.

On the other hand, I think that it is important that the dead aren't just statistics, that they are real people for the world, just as they are very much real people to the people that loved them and that are grieving. And of course, by definition you are printing the interviews with the permission of the bereaved. I don't suppose that there is a definite answer,and I just wish that I could trust the media to be sensitive and take the families into consideration, but you'd have to be very naive trust the media nowadays.

I agree very much with TakeThis and ajay - it seems that everyone else's wants and needs are put before the people who are most affected by this death. In a few year's time, this event will become like Marilyn Monroe's death - it will be history, a sad story about fame. But her family will never heal. :(

Well the only way it is ever going to stop is if the tabloid and scandal-mags are left unbought on the shelves, isn't it? The hacks aren't going to stop, they're like errant toddlers who think they're onto a good thing so they keep on and on. They have no idea of what's morally right and if they did, it wouldn't bother them in the slightest as long as they get their paycheck. I don't think we have proper journalists in the UK anymore.

Blame them certainly, blame the television stations for televising this ghoulish muck, but if you feel so strongly, complain, complain, complain... don't just whinge about it on a chatboard.

Don't buy scandal rags, let the whole 'celeb papparazi' thing implode to dust where it belongs but don't be a part of it and them grizzle that you don't like bits of it. It just looks and is stupid.

God help our kids with the influences and the role models they have today... :(

ajay... I do actually agree with you, I'm just saying that as those pictures are 'out there', whether we want them or not, without warning, the best thing is to use them to show the ugly side of drugs/alcohol, not the glorified weeping/wailing/tribute thing.

I think the media obsession with celebrity death upped a gear when Diana died. There was rolling news coverage on every station and some newspapers still find something to print about her on an almost weekly basis even now.

The media obsession with every detail of massacres was with Columbine. There were reporters dragging children from the buildings whilst the shootings were still going on and then pushing them in front of live TV cameras and asking them how they felt.

Later with Columbine, (though by days, not weeks or months) someone started a business touring by bus the homes of the victims and the murderers.

Lying I don't buy those rags and never have and I'm avoiding reading and commenting on press blogs etc about the tragedy in norway and winehouse's death, because I don't want to take part in their coverage.

And I do complain, whether it's here or letter/email.

I think it's important that death is not a paparazzi sport and society and the media's reporting on tragedy should be more respectful and responsible.

YANBU.

I think journalism is a tricky path to walk. But I think being offended on occasion is small price to pay for a free press. Don't buy the DM if you don't like it (I don't) don't watch 24 hour rolling news(I don't) dobuy quality newspapers, listen to 'Today' on Radio 4 and support the journalism which exposes phone hacking, abuse in care homes, politicians fiddling expenses.

There are PCC and NUJ guidelines for reporting death and one is knock and if you are told to leave then leave and do not go back. There are some newsdesk for whom this is not good enough (daily mail) and journalists are under pressure to get the story because people like reading all the details. I don't know what the answer is TBH.

it is a shocking image but newspapers show far worse. why hide your children from reality.

BornSicky... I ranted a bit much... It really wasn't geared at anyone on this board, I just despise 'journalists'. I complain bitterly, I must be on a hitlist by now. When did journalism move from honest reporting of facts to this sensationalist, hysterical garbarge? :(

I agree with NormanTebbit regarding important issues like care home abuse and politicians cheating their expenses and so on. The public has a right to know and they should be interested in that, it affects them so much.

I just think that so much energy is wasted on the vapid and the vacuous.

I wonder what would happen if every journalist told to knock on the door of a just bereaved person decided to say 'No'? I must confess, I've wondered that about Hitler too, if every one of his soldiers had just stood their ground and refused to plumb the depths of inhumanity... odd how the parallel works for me.

OFGS

Yup we are all Nazi footsoldiers

The stuff was ON DISPLAY, 'in your face', at my local newsagents. It was not possible to choose not to see it.

Really? How did you make that leap from my post? Journalists falling over themselves to do their editor's bidding, even though the task is disgusting and they are aware of that, is what I meant.