to be utterly disgusted with the pictures on the front of some of today's papers?

[Pipbin]

I was in the supermarket earlier and saw the front of most of the newspapers. All of them had the TV news people who were shot in the US on the cover.
Some of them had staff pictures of them, the kind of thing that would be on their ID cards for example, but The Daily Mail and the Telegraph had pictures taken from the film that the gunman made showing the second that the poor woman was shot.
This is the last living moments of a person. No one needs to see that and it certainly shouldn't be plastered all over the front of papers for nothing other than titillation.

I know I shouldn't expect too much from the likes of the Mail but I still want to just bitch about it.

Yes, was very shocked at the Telegraph. Completely unnecessary, and one more reason not to buy it.

The DM have been pushing the limits of decency beyond breaking point for months with their pictures of ISIL atrocities.

It's absolutely revolting.

We cannot assume that the deceased news crew would find it disrespectful. They were journalists and made decisions about content every day in their working lives.

I strongly suspect that had they been reporting on this story, they would likely have linked to or included still of the deaths in their report. They were journalists.

There is also the need to have a story told. Some families don't want their relatives graphic last moments put up on display but others desperately WANT you to see it. They WANT you to know what was done to their loved one. They want the truth out there.

This was exemplified by one of the racism related lynchings in the Deep South. The mother of the dead man agreed that photographs of her son being attacked and then photos of his dead, beaten and tortured body should be on the front page of every newspaper. I will try to find the name for anyone who is interested.

You just cannot generalise in cases like this nor can you base a decision upon your own subjective feelings.

It's disgusting.
We were in Ireland a few months ago and a shopkeeper was telling me customers were boycotting The Daily Star as that mornings paper had used pictures of 6 bodies in bodybags with a head shot of each of the Berkeley balcony victims on it on each bag.
Utterly revolting

Publishing such graphic shots (of fear, in this case) just assists the offender capucine, don't you think?

You could say that about millions of current event photos though, I think Arsenic.

A lot of war photography focuses on fear, pain, loss, terror as does any coverage of disaster. To be honest, I don't think I'd find a photo of the plane going into WT1 any less distressing of my loved one was on that plane because when you are in loss and grief and trauma, you risk personalising everything.

Think of the Ebola images, the images of famine, of close ups of children dying, starving. They are JUST as graphic, just as painful and I fail to see how their parents or anyone with a heart wouldn't find those as horrid and as generating of feelings of helplessnes, anger and fear as the images of the news crew in their final moments. And as journalists, they probably would have published and approved those images themselves.

Just to add to the idea of assisting offenders-

I understand that argument, of not colluding with their criminality but lots of images could be said to do that.

Again, images of Israeli and Palestinian atrocities, of the awful Syrian situation, the Cambodian killing fields, the deaths of the VietCong and US soldiers, the images of orange jumpsuited hostages and Guantanamo inmates....they ALL collude to some degree and go towards promoting agendas, all press people can do is to mitigate this where possible but they know avoiding it is impossible.

But, traditionally, there HAS been a line, hasn't there? And the line involved avoiding gratuitous images and giving people their dignity.

Occasions on which the line has been crossed (usually deliberately and with specific purpose) such as the lynching pictures, stand out in the mind for that very reason.

I saw them and thought it was journalism at it's lowest form. Horrible for the families of those who died.

It's not a new thing. I remember, as an older teen, being shocked at the photos in the papers of the Hillsborough tragedy and wondering why the journalists stood there taking photos instead of trying to pull people out. I also remember photos of two soldiers being surrounded by a mob and killed in Ireland. The photos haunted me. I've never thought much of journalists since.

And it is not a modern phenomenon.
Just look into The Illustrated Police News. Just as bad but at least then it was only etchings.

Using, well they would have published them is no excuse either, it's another 'everyone else does it'.

Yes, it is very much in the cheap-thrill penny-dreadful tradition, isn't it?

honeyroar it is massively, massively important that journalists took those pictures. They have been used in every inquest into the deaths of all those involved and have been vitally important in the fight to ensure nothing like that happens again. (I am not talking about the Sun)

It is a huge conflict when you are a reporter in a war zone, at the scene of a big accident or at an emergency situation because you feel like you want to DO something, but of course in writing and photographing these things you ARE doing something incredibly important. Of course, if there is something you can do to immediately help people without it getting in the way of reporting events then you do it, but otherwise your job is to faithfully and honestly record events, not to be a hero.

So no, they weren't just 'stood there taking photos.'

And also, I agree with everything capucine said in a more eloquent way than I ever could.

Did anyone read that the fireman from the Shoreham Air crash were disgusted that people were filming what was going on not helping.

I think things have changed, first thing people would do is help. Now "i'll just get my phone to put this on Facebook and show x y and z".

The footage both was and is too much to be filmed. But its the same as rubber neckers at accidents, some people have a morbid curiosity.

Nothing absolutely nothing in comparison, but i fainted a year ago. When i came round there was a lovely lady ringing an ambulance and someone else filming it. I mean what were they hoping they would get? Footage of a fit? Footage of me dying? Footage of me pissing myself in my subconscious state?

^The DM have been pushing the limits of decency beyond breaking point for months with their pictures of ISIL atrocities.

It's absolutely revolting.^

I do think there is a need to provide evidence when you are reporting really horrific events that are politically controversial because, with the rise of new media, we are seeing a tremendous rise in the number of people that buy into conspiracy theories.

If you report that ISIS is cutting people's heads off without including visual evidence, then people will say it is a lie. They will say it is atrocity propaganda, and another Nayirah testimony, where Iraqi soldiers were said to take Kuwaiti babies out of incubators in order to steal the incubators, leaving the babies to die.

But in this case, it's not helping any cause. The gunman had a camera on his head so he could upload film of his acts and gain notoriety. And he has done so and it has worked - and now the newspapers have printed those pictures. So, he got what he wanted, thanks to the newspapers. What about the idea news channels refusing to broadcast any footage at all, out of respect? Obviously they would keep the footage and give it to the police for legal purposes.

This is worlds away from people taking pictures of terrible events to document them. This is footage filmed by the actual murderer.

YANBU at all and anyone who thinks you were needs to have a rethink.

Just unbelievable that editors would think it was fine to print them and I also think security at the TV station needs to have an overhaul as it's shocking a man who was sacked could get so close never mind with a gun and camera.

YANBU
Terribly sad and not pleasant having to explain that image to dd (age 9) who saw the mirror paper cover when we went shopping earlier.

There has never been a line per se about what is publishable and what is not in hard news. You apply the ethics to a situation and a story each time, or you should do. You conference with colleagues and you have an awareness of what other sites might decide. However editors will make mistakes and the faster news content is demanded, the more common mistakes might become.

Unfortunately these shootings took place in a public shopping and leisure centre so it would be pretty impossible to maintain full control over security.

There has never been a line per se about what is publishable and what is not in hard news.

Oh I think there was a broad understanding in the British print press.

Sorry but this is wildly and vastly out of date in todays multi media world. And go back in time and you will find plenty of coverage of stories that is just as graphic, more so sometimes. And people were asking the same questions as they do now. To believe that it has suddenly worsened is erroneous.

Naturally it is multi-channel, multi-platform, 24 hr rolling this that and the other that has contributed to the creep. I don't think that's in dispute, is it?

As for there being many precedents. I'm struggling to think of a previous instance in which a killer's own footage/shot of a victim screaming in terror, weapon in frame has been used by mainstream UK media.

Oh it's a fabulous precedent isn't it.

Murder someone, film it, then their terror will be on the front page of the newspapers. Job done.

Oh I'm sure the editors thought long and hard about how she would have felt, how her family would feel. They just didnt give a shit.

I am so glad that someone else posted this. I haven't been able to stop thinking about it since I saw the front covers in the petrol station this morning. I think it is abhorrent. I turned them round - much to the bafflement of the other customers waiting to pay.