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.

Seriously, how crap is our media?

Most of the mainstream media knew about Savile for years before it broke.

Silence.

But a major newspaper will transgress boundaries of common humanity to get a picture of a dead child.

I know we get the press we deserve but ... It's a pretty poor 4th estate, isn't it?

Sorry.
I didn't mean that to sound so bitter. I certainly didn't mean to be rude to any people working in the media.
I genuinely mean that.

I feel the same way, thecatfromjapan and have my own reasons for hating that 'industry'. My friend and her husband killed herself years ago, before FB and social media and a reporter found her phone book and harassed me for a story about her. Scum, utter scum and I really don't know what their purpose is.

You won't catch me making excuses about your justified criticisms TheCat and Lying.

I'm sorry for your loss.

Celerie, that's kind but it was her family I really felt for - they chased them too. I suppose it's like any other job, you get good ones and bad ones. I just think that the bad ones are extremely bad in a way that other industries wouldn't have such scope to be.

Op afraid it's the way it is.

Our dd was injured on a school trip with her friends and the press were trying to get access to their online profiles.

The teacher who died had a dd who was on the trip. She had lost her dad and her mom was seriously injured. The press said either give us a picture or we will take one of your fb. She had to delete her account.

They were awful outside the school. Offering pupils a tenner to tell them the girls names.
Pictures of my dd lying on the road were published in a national newspaper. Vile vile vile bastards.

I think there's a lot of learned helplessness in journalism. I decided not to doorstop a family recently when there was a local high profile road death.

The press organisation that did got nothing other than a lot of bad publicity on their social media profiles, with people criticising them.

The story on our site wasn't harmed by the lack of a photo of the person. Drew a high number of page views because., sadly, these stories always do, they always do with or without an image. And not ONE of the comments underneath the link asked why we didn't have a photo of the person involved. I have yet to come across that request "where's the photo" and as long as our page views are climbing, I can live with being second in the race- and fiscally it has yet to do us any harm although I might one day be proved wrong on that, we'll see.

Ruled, that's horrendous. Aside from child protection issues and not talking to strangers, what a vile thing for them to do.

Do schools still teach what it means to have 'personal integrity'? I remember doing this in school, it was described as doing what you think is right regardless what other people do or think when you know they're doing wrong.

Actually, Enid Blyton was teaching it at a very basic level, still sticks in my mind.

I don't understand why the pouty Instagram photos are not true representations? Surely they've been posted by the individuals themselves on social media and so represent how they constructed their own social identities? This is the age of the selfie.

Rules sorry to hear about your daughters accident, sounds horrendous. I agree with Celerie; photos are not needed, esoecially if obtaining them upsets family/friends.
I'm sure most journalists are good people, maybe it would take one paper to make a stand on this and others would follow.
Think it is a good point to make profile pictures clip art etc.

I was a reporter on local and regional papers for a very long time. And I can honestly say that the split between those families who do want to talk to the press following a relative's untimely death, and those who don't, is around 50/50. It varies hugely by area, and demographic, but overall it's half half.

I know people may find it hard to believe - and if it were me in that situation I don't think I'd want to talk to be reporters - but lots of families honestly do want to pay tribute to those who have died, in their own words.
They often want to talk about who it is who has died, hand over photos etc, and feel that the personality of the deceased is represented in the press reports.

I could give hundreds of examples, but one that springs to mind is the mother of a young man who died in quite horrific circumstances. This was Manchester, around a decade ago.

When I knocked on the door, fully expecting to be told where to go, she invited me in, and said she'd been expecting me.
She then handed me the pictures she'd selected for the paper, and a handwritten statement that she wanted to be used in print. We talked for a couple of hours, she made me tea, and I personally took her a copy of the piece I wrote as a result.

Often families don't trust the police, and don't want to use their FLOs as a way to speak to the media, for one reason or another. But the local paper is a more reliable and familiar face.

Families might have had people's birth and marriage notices in there, their nativity plays, their sports days.
So I can see why they might want their family member's death documenting in the local paper as well, in a way that gives them some control over the content. They don't get this from a police press release.

That's interesting, Running, what I want to know though is, where a family is NOT interested, would the paper honour that? Even if it's a 'juicy' story?

All very well when people want to talk, hand over pictures, etc. but quite a different prospect when they don't want this. Are they overridden as referred to in the example upthread, ie. give us the picture OR we'll print one anyway?

I feel sorry for good journalists, I'm sure there are some. The bad ones just spread misery and are nothing but parasites.

Using information in a Police PR does not stop you obtaining more information later on- it isn't an ad infitum decision , an either/or.

A good reporter is usually able to suss out whether an approach would be welcomed or not, especially in these days of instant digital communication and widespread social networking. The chances of knocking on a door cold are slim because in a small community like mine, I am often approached by a member of the family or social circle or I encounter commentary on the loss on my own private social media networks. It is more subtle to send a discreet PM than public doorstop and I, for one, am thankful for it.

I do agree that local families see their lives played out in their local news and having their loved one memorialised in a way of their choosing affords them both a sense of control and a sense of dignity. And a heartfelt personal tribute forms part of a permanent record, a kind of validation that the person existed and was important to more people than the family could ever imagine. When I read these tributes and the comments left underneath it is like the ripples on a pool spreading outwards and I would imagine that even the RIP comments from strangers could be immensely comforting.

The problem is when other, national newspaper plunder those comments to produce a facsimile of the original, local and personal story. That is annoying and can end up mawkishly gratuitous.

At every media organisation I've ever worked at, where a family didn't want to talk, their wishes would be respected. We wouldn't try and force them - their wishes would trump the "juicy" story every single time.

Any sort of bribery to try and get photos anyway would have meant disciplinary action for the reporter/photographer.

In every case where families haven't wanted to talk to me, I've given them my card in case they want to get in touch in future (many do, esp if there are future fundraising charity appeals or similar), said I'm very sorry for their loss, and left immediately.

I know that agencies do operate differently. Freelancers don't get paid if they don't get a story, staff reporters do. Hence agency staff - the "paparazzi" if you will - can be forceful. I've seen it, it's reprehensible, and it gives proper journalists a bad name. But then there are bastards in every profession.

We would never go against the wishes of the family. Apart from the moral factor and to put it bluntly, you need to maintain good will in small communities. Your organisation would not survive otherwise. Nobody would come to you with stories if you pissed them all off and in a small community, word gets around fast.

Yanbu
There was a mum who lost both her DC in a terrible accident and the media used her Facebook pics.
Which were, typically, of her on a night out.
It made her look like a terrible mum who just boozes and goes clubbing all the time.

I don't see how anyone can complain if pictures that are published on social media are used for any other purpose - good or bad.

Once you have put it on the web (even posted "privately"), it's out of your control and you can't rely on the good nature of everyone who can get hold of it.

If you don't want it to be misused, don't put it on the web.

I know people may find it hard to believe - and if it were me in that situation I don't think I'd want to talk to be reporters - but lots of families honestly do want to pay tribute to those who have died, in their own words. They often want to talk about who it is who has died, hand over photos etc, and feel that the personality of the deceased is represented in the press reports.

I'd agree with this ^^ and everything you've said on this thread Running.

I realise harassment, emotional blackmail, theft and worse goes on but I do not believe knocking at a door or making a call and asking a polite question is harassment.

I do believe that the regurgitation of press releases is appalling journalistic practice though.

There is absolutely no excuse for not checking the details for yourself. And that includes being too lazy to get out of the office or too mimsy to knock on a door and risk verbal or physical abuse.

As a journalist you will not be everyone's friend. As soon as you get that, the better you'll do the job.

Press officers make mistakes, as do we all. That's why press releases should be checked.

But sometimes they have an agenda. Particularly police press officers whose priority is usually the reputation of their force rather than revealing the unpalatable truth.

This appeared last night:
Not an obvious cover up by Scotland Yard's press bureau but still very bad. Read the link and marvel that these two officers have kept their jobs.

Would the family of Sean Rigg be preferred to be left to grieve in peace?

And then there's Hillsborough fighting to the front of a long and indistinguished litany of the way press officers - police, government and private industry - wish to present things to a public and a compliant press who just want to say it's all too tawdry or doesn't conform to their financial or political agenda.

Thank you Limited! V much appreciated.

And yes - your point re press officers is a very good one. They do not put out the "truth" in releases, they put out their version of it.
Which is why I find it frightening when journalists say they use police press releases unchanged. It is not a reporter's job to take "facts" at face value, particularly not from pr professionals employed to make an organisation look good.

In any release, the press officer may have made a mistake, they may be being sparing with the truth - anything. A reporter has a duty to their readers to get it right, not idly churn out what they're told.

The thing about the media I hate most in these type of situations, is when they publish photos taken at a funeral. It's so intrusive. I can understand it a bit if a celebrity has died, who has chosen to live their lives in the public eye, but when this poor girl who died on the school trip has her funeral, there will invariably be photos in the newspapers of her family carrying the coffin, her parents crying etc, and it feels so wrong.

Diryan - funeral coverage is always arranged with the family, funeral director and (where they're involved) the police. I have never covered a funeral where the family have not known and agreed to press coverage in advance.

Press are given a specific area in which to stand, in accordance with the family's wishes. Sometimes they are invited into the church, sometimes it's a vantage point outside instead.

Sometimes very specific requests are given by the family, as well, and are agreed to. Again, sometimes the family want coverage of the funeral as they feel it adds to the "send off" for their loved ones. That's why, often, media are invited in, or given copies of the order of service which they can then use in reports.

This is my experience from 15 years of journalism in media outlets across the North. I appreciate it may not be the same everywhere.

I also appreciate that some families may not want funerals to be covered by the media, but I personally have never encountered a situation where press have been asked not to attend.

Thanks Running, thats really interesting, had no idea that the families had any say in it. I always thought that if it was me I'd hate to be photographed at the funeral of a DC, but I guess you can never know how you'd feel until that situation presented itself.

Interesting that you have discounted my comments above about fact checking and editing.

That to me is pretty worrying, an inability to actually read what somebody has said as the thread goes on and people explain themselves futher.

Still, seeing as the organisation I work for recently won an award for its journalism and one of its recent pieces from last year is actually on a reading list for students as an example of great regional journalism, I shall swallow my irritation and carry on.

Namaste.

Dunblane- the press was asked not to attend. Just in case you'd forgotten that one.

Dunblane

I also agree with everything running has said.

I'm a reporter and I have never, ever hounded a family. I would say that actually I get about 75 per cent of people wanting to talk when I've done door knocks.

But similarly I would also never just cut and paste a police press release about a death. That wouldn't be journalism, would it? It would just be, er, cutting and pasting, which I might as well get my 4-y-o to do.

We also ask before attending funerals and in 99 per cent of cases before using photos from social media these days. But tbh if a family member posts their own tribute and pic on FB and its shared a thousand times, then I'm going to use that because it's already out there in the public domain.

And there are times when I go against the wishes of the family. We had one where the a man had murdered his wife. The police knew it, we knew it and everyone in the community knew it. He phoned us to ask tell us not to run the story. It was in the public interest to run it, so we did. We didn't mention our suspicions of course, we just reported the death. He was later convicted and sentenced to life. Should we have respected his wishes?