It's a classic example of public interest versus what the public is interested in versus what the press thinks the public is interested in.
There have been plenty of examples throughout print and visual media of difficult and challenging images being used to illustrate a story. The Vietnam War, 9/11, the First and Second WW, the suicides of men and women in the Wall St Crash in the twenties, photos of dead high profile people, famine, natural disasters all provided an endless seam of graphic and unpleasant images. So to say it is recent is incorrect which is seemingly the argument of a lot of people today.
When you use images from 'citizen journalists' you have to apply the code of ethics and fairness of use on their behalf as an editor. You have to remember that people who take photos of something unpleasant have CHOSEN to do that, just as those crowds who witnessed public hangings chose to do so all those decades ago (and still do in many countries who still use CP).
However with digital media increasingly using auto play and not everyone on social media understanding that they can often disable this function, I don't see the same adherence to fairness of use. It is very hard when financial factors increasingly influence what goes on the front page and these decisions are incresingly split second ones, not made overnight whilst you put the print editions to bed. When you have advertisers in close proximity, this gets even harder.
I understand why people find these images hard but we have images of graphic violence and murder in the press all the time. The families, friends and survivors of 9/11 see VT of those planes all the time and they are having to watch the murder of people too albeit faceless.
The incident yesterday makes it harder for us to remain disspassionate. It forces us to engage with the effects of guns, or violence, poor mental health care. We cannot intellectualise when it is there in fromt of us. And that can make us feel angry and project that anger onto the organisations who are effectively preventing us from using our defence mechanisms.,
As for the families, well I sympathise and think it is right and civilised to engage with them before printing certain images and to do everything in our power to help them cope with the necessary photo story being out there. It is NOT right to use these images as click bait and sex them up a la Tarantino like the Sun did, photoshopping the blast from the gun etc.
What is right though is contextualising and telling the story. IF that is a story about the lack of protection afforded news crews, about the ease by which a person with a gun can access a public area, about the professional focus these crews had which was so strong, it meant they did not notice peripheral events such as a gun being pointed at them (because they were in the interviewee / interviewer / camera person triangle) then the images might be justified.