Front pages of papers - so mad!

[harrisey]

I am so mad with today's press. When my usual Guardian arrived today I found myself floundering to explain to my ds (4) what the picture on the front was about. It was the dead body of Al-Zarqawi!
Now I know this is news but heck, I didnt really want to have to explain American 'justice' to a little boy who is not yet even at school. You would think they could take a little more care with their front page - this image could much more tastefully have been shown inside the paper (if we needed to see it at all - I beleive he is dead without then having to show me his face).
It just seems a bit distasteful - and I want to know how they would choose to explain it to a 4yo! So I emailed them!

Well, quite. The naked women have at least chosen to be on the covers as naked women, and been paid for it. The corpses didn't get a choice.

We were watching the 6 o clock news with our 5 yr old when this piece of news came on - with graphic close up head shots. DD1 turned round and asked us if that man was sleepping or dead? We found it easy to explain to her that he was dead because he had been killed and why he had been killed.
Personally, I have found the honest but limited detail approach the easiest with mine. Young children are surprisingly accepting of harsh facts if explained carefully and at their level.

oops - i agree with you in part about dignity and repsect. with that little girl on the beach I did wonder how a camera man can do that - when every fibre in me would want to ditch the camera and try to comfort her. however, I have a kind of grudging respect for the people that do that. Not everyone reads the news as thoroughly and thoughtfully as some people do and I do tnink pictures are an incredibly effective and important way of portraying news. there are 2 really good examples of this for me. Compare the Amnesty report-like description of torture: "he was stripped naked and soldiers threatened to set a dog on him" to the famous Abu Ghraib picture of that happening. The latter told it like it was, in a way that words just can't. The second was the pictures of dead Iraqi soldiers after the 1991 Gulf War - the ones who had been killed when retreating. again the words just don;t cut it. And I think the same often goes for pictures of various disasters. I do agree though that it's a fine line, and I also agree that issues like dignity and consent are given less consideration when we are looking at non-westerners.

I would just say "A baddy got killed"

Regarding young girls and family members etc. - well, what's more shocking, a picture of a corpse or the fact that we are continuing to kill innocent civilians through our fecked-up war? I think it's EXTREMELY IMPORTANT that we are not shielded from the horrors of war. If you take offense at seeing a child's grief over your breakfast how much more shocking is it for the family who wake up to find their loved ones killed?

I agree

There are some circumstances where it is appropriate to depict dead bodies (when the world needs to see it to realise the shocking reality), and there are others where it is completely unnecessary and as Soupdragon says - ghoulish (like the dead body of Al-Z)

The newspaper may be black and white but there is no need for us to be...

but the picture tells the story. what other image would you suggest?

A photo of him alive would have sufficed just as well (as a reminder re who he was), with the text below explaining that he is now dead

No, it wouldn't, the story is that he's dead. A pic of him alive would be bizarre. The picture tells the story.

Disagree...

When Terry Waite was a captive and the press ran stories on him they didn't (couldn't) show pictures of him bound and gagged or whatever in a darkened room, they showed pictures of him prior to being taken hostage. It worked just as well.

When Princess Di died it wasn't possible to show pictures of her corpse on the operating table, but the press managed to cover the story without it

If there WAS no picture people would say that Bush had made it up

The picture is also published so that his followers know he is dead and don't think it is made up

That's why

lol I don't know why I am posting on the subject, I don't feel that strongly about it

That's a better reason Morningpaper admittedly...

Terry Waite - no pics available.

Diana - no pics available.

Al-Z - pics available.

Although - is Princess Diana really dead, or is she alive and well and living in a basement flat with Elvis? (British establishment conspiracy because she was destabilising the monarchy)

Ah yes Edam but my point is that the fact that the pictures were not available didn't detract from the news coverage or make it impossible to report the stories properly, so just because Al-Z's picture was available doesn't mean that it had to be used

Not much to add other than I agree that you can't wrap your child in cotton wool. Is this any worse than what they might see on the front page of the Sun when visiting a supermarket?

Life's too short. Children need to understand that there is a world outside their own.

It DID have to be used

The fact that his dead picture was all over the papers WAS the victory

nothing else would do

Yes it did, because it's there, and it tells the story. Not only more powerfully than words but practically without words.

the point about evidence is also a good one.

Pah! I'm all argued out now, but I leave... unconvinced

lol Jan

hmc, any paper that employed you as a pic editor would go bust in days!

But belated lol at JanH's comments

(did think that his picture could have been published on a website somewhere which might have done just as well)