Media using children's Instagram pouts when they die

[FlorenceMattell]

Tragically a little girl has died while on holiday with the school. The first picture the papers ( daily M)publish is one of her pouting - I'm guessing they have obtained from her Instagram or Facebook page.
AIBU to think this is not on?
I have a daughter the same age and she has some photos like this as do all her friends.
They don't represent them, I prefer the sporting picture, the family pictures etc.
I would be very upset as a parent if my daughter died and the picture to represent her was from her Instagram account.
I think the papers should agree to stop this practice with regards to children.

Agreed, the family may not be in a place to worry about that right now, but that doesn't make it right.

And it's not just the DM. The Times carried the same picture on its front page.

YANBU I saw this image on BBC news and thought the same OP. Poor girl.

Sadly i imagine the majority of kids these days will have images of themselves drifting about on the internet/social media which can be lifted by anyone by the time they are in their late teens. The pouty ones are fairly harmless at least.

My BIL had to pay a lot of money to get his 'internet image' cleaned up so that he could apply for a senior management role a few years ago . It was due to some dodgy photos of him in his early 20s which would not have helped his application if they'd googled him.

I agree, OP.

Celerie - I found your posts really thoughtful. I'm glad you posted.

desperately sad story.

however because so many buy the gutter press, and the gutter press wants photos, they grab a photo from wherever they can. All FB profile shots are publicly accessible unless the profile is set not to be searchable.

utterly irrelevant in the case of this tragedy, but everyone should set their FB profile to non-searchable, and teach kids to do the same. Your internet tracks follow you forever, be careful.

Thank you TheCat.

Things are changing so swiftly with regards to the established conventions of etiquette in social media but I do agree that it isn't that hard to know where the moral boundaries lie and any reporter/journo who claims otherwise is being disengenuous.

(Sorry if that sounds a bit pompous!)

Yes, as Specialsubject advises, adjust your social media settings to non searchable and I'd also advise changing tagging to 'review before posting' to give you a modicum of control over that too.

I agree OP, I've noticed this aswell.

YANBU. I thought about this after the Alton Tower's crash, and the media grabbed photos from Facebook/Instagram to show the victims.

YANBU

YANBU

YANBU

Sorry

i thought you couldnt hide your profile pic?

Celerie - as a journo and lecturer, I find it terrifying that, wherever you work, you don't change a word of police press releases.
Obviously you don't change quotes, but the rest? Really? That would be churnalism at its worst, surely?

As for the use of photos, that's a really interesting one, and something that's a very grey area, legally and ethically.

As an exercise with our undergrads, we use a scenario where a girl has died and her mother has asked the paper not to use a social media pic.
Most of the students say they wouldn't use the pic. But then an agency supplies the same photo to the nationals. Would you use it then?
How about when a friend of the girl, who took the photo, emails you a copy - no copyright issues there. Would you run it?And how about when the girl's father explicitly asks you to run the picture? It's not easy. If you've got that far, every paper in the country is using the photo aside from yours. And your readers are wondering why.

Fact is, people want a photo with a story, and photos on social media are (depending on privacy settings) in the public domain. Gets even blurrier, ethically, when agencies take the photos from social media and send them on. It's not like pic editors are nicking Facebook photos themselves, at least not usually. Photos are all over the wires straight away, that's how snappers make their money.

As a reporter, you know the agencies that supply the nationals are going to use the social media pix. The nationals don't care.
So if you work on a regional or local title, you're going to be behind the rest if you don't do the same. When most newspapers are in dire straits, that's an issue.

Also, some parents want photos out there, some don't. In the case of split families, whose wishes do you respect? What about when photos are left at the scene of an incident? What about when you have photos of the deceased on the newspaper files, say from school proms?

It's a minefield and not one with any easy answers so it's hardly surprising that, when people want immediate, 24-hr rolling news, most publishers go for the easy option of using selfies - which also, conveniently, have no copyright issues once the person who took them has died.

Running thank you for your post ; interesting to have journalists perspective.
Do you think the industry would ever agree to not publish selfies of children, and wait for family photos?

A friend of mines daughter killed herself (horrific circumstances).

Daily Mail were first to take a photo from her FB.

24 hrs later they gave the family an ultimatum either you give us a photo or we will publish this one now.

So in the midst of the chaos and grief and police we had to scramble around to find a photo for the press

The press love it when people die or get maimed or suffer misfortune. It sells stories and a bit of spin does the trick. They make money though because people continually roll up to the sideshow.

Florence - maybe, but it's a moot point when, in most cases now, friends, family, workmates, schoolfriends etc have shared photos of the deceased on social media within hours of a death being reported.

Even 10 years ago, as reporters, our first chance to ask for a photo of someone who had died would be when we'd go and do a "death knock" with grieving families.

Now, you've heard about a tragedy on Twitter, and seen the photos, before the police have even issued a press release.

Everyone is a publisher now. People with large Twitter followings have a far higher "circulation" than most of the national press.

Any regulation of the press needs to take this into account. Most reporters are good, honest, people who don't want to hurt grieving families and would welcome guidelines - but what point are such guidelines when it will never apply to social media, and most likely not to freelancers and agencies?

Running

It isn't churnalism. It is for legal reasons because if we start amending reports about, say, an arrest and impending police action we could be guilty of prejudicing the investigation and trial. I'm sure you would understand what the legal ramifications are of putting your own spin on a factual report.

As for police releases about road traffic deaths, if they are well written and factual, what exactly would be the point in changing them other than ego reasons? The facts are just that, no need to dress them up. I keep an eye on them for errors, syntax etc the rest is what it is- information provision and apart from re-ordering sentences, there's not a lot else you can do with it apart from idle speculation or maudlin factoids.

The real unpleasantness in news journalism is when writers start dressing things up and confusing OPED with news.

I don't use social media images in my reports (I don't want to out myself but I do have a level of control as to what I do, say no more) and to date I have had access to police provided images which have been adequate.

The race to the bottom argument is one often put to me but I disagree. A lot of journalists use that argument to justify their reprehensible actions. In our area, we have managed very well without plundering social media accounts and actually, building a readership of people who don't respond to a certain type of journalism has been our goal.

Another way to avoid plundering of images on Facebook is to not use an image of yourself on your profile and header which is public, even if you deactivate the search facility.

A lot of news orgs will use those and its the easiest way of accessing an image.

Celerie - I teach media law. Your argument about "legal reasons" holds no water.

I hate to derail the thread, but what you are saying about cut and pasting police press releases and passing them off as news is genuinely frightening. To put it bluntly, you wouldn't get beyond the first semester in a NCTJ-accredited course while believing that's the way you do things.

A press release is the basis for a story, not the story itself. As you think otherwise, I'm wondering what it is you actually do. But I fully accept that you may not want to reveal it on this thread.

I am not passing them off as news. I do not cut and paste. I write up the press releases after editing them for any errors.

I fact check ensuring that the road names match up with the actual geography, I ensure that they fit the template on the digital site.

The press release may be along the lines of

£"olice appeal for witnesses after a tractor was stolen from a barn in om Friday the 4th of July.

The tractor is a , registration number and was stored in a locked shed which had forced open using a .

Any members of the public with information about it can call using CR or (website link).

Now I can amend this to highlight a story about recent trends in agricultural theft. I can write a story about locals who are accusing travellers of stealing goods. I can write this as a stand along piece which is factual or opinion led but if I am merely communicating the facts of a theft of a tractor from a shed in rural then there is very little else to add to the story other than quotes from the victims should the release not include them and I would indeed do this in a follow up story which expands upon the original report.

Not quite sure what the slurs and aggression are about. I'm not going to respond to AH attacks.

I'm accredited by the way. That may or may not be the fault of my lecturers .

See recent press story on the quality of journalism courses in the trades.

Weathergames - that is really sad.

One of the things I love about 'Roman Holiday' (the film with Audrey Hepburn,) is the idea that a news story would be pulled because the journo won't write it up, and that without the text, the pictures would be worthless.

I can't imagine that happening now.

The more I think about it, the worse that story is, weather.