Been to any fun funerals lately? Had an entertaining gawp at any sobbing relatives of the deceased? Did you manage to capture a couple of shots of parents pole-axed by grief? Whyever not?
If you’re not poring over images of people devastated by grief, you must be out of touch and hopelessly touchy, it seems. That’s the message some media outlets are giving out with their constant focussing on the horrible aftermath of death on grieving relatives and friends of those who pass away.
Just last week, we were alerted to the tragic outcome of the search for the missing German teen Mike Mansholt. Worried relatives who had flown over to search for him identified the corpse.
I reckon that a straightforward reporting of the grim discovery would have satisfied all public interest requirements. But no. We were treated to a shot of the boy’s father looking at his body and to other family members experiencing the first anguished moments of grief.
No discernible useful purpose was reached by relaying the image. Mansholt’s death had been certified by medical personnel, his identity established and his dear ones – predictably – grieving. So why persist in publishing or broadcasting such images if not to cultivate and encourage viewers’ morbid curiosity?
There is absolutely no such need in cases such as the Mansholt one. The publication of those particular shots was an exercise in insensitive and callow reporting
Somebody said that the media has a duty to give the public an uncensored view of what is going on in the world around us. That is a convenient excuse for lazy and useless reportage.
There are innumerable activities going on all the time that the media does not cover – not necessarily because there is any censorship going on, but because they are not newsworthy. The media is not obliged – and would be wasting its resources – if it had to transmit every street corner conversation, every under-9 football match, every cat show. And that’s because they have limited news value and can be easily accessed and discussed for the small circle of people for whom these things matter. Newsworthiness is the key.
Someone else mentioned the heart-breaking photo of little Aylan Kurdi washed ashore on the beach in Turkey as a justification for the publication of the Mansholt photos. The two are hardly comparable. The death of a toddler in the course of a mass tragedy is not the same as a terribly unfortunate accidental death.
The picture of Aylan was published in order to highlight the tragedy of the Syrian people, to humanise their suffering. Still, the publication did not take place lightly and only after much discussion by responsible media outlets such as The Guardian. Deputy editor Paul Johnson explained how the paper reached its decision to publish the photographs and to respect the paper’s editorial code requiring “a strong public interest justification”.
He said: “We didn’t rush to publish. We verified the photographs and waited for a full story before publication. The enormous poignancy and potential power of the photographs was evident from the start. Could they be the images that provided a tipping point? Would public sympathy, and perhaps anger at Britain’s role as an apparent bystander in this saga, be moved by them? We decided that both of these were highly likely. Those factors had to be balanced against the real shock that some readers would feel.”
He was proved right, as the photos raised awareness of the Syrian issue. In much the same way, the soul-searingly distressing pictures of the little Kim Phuc, fleeing from a napalm attack in Vietnam in 1972, brought home the atrocities being committed by America’s ally, the South Vietnamese air force. However, in both cases, there was a context, a pressing need to show private suffering to a wider audience so it could be stopped.
There is absolutely no such need in cases such as the Mansholt one. The publication of those particular shots was an exercise in insensitive and callow reporting – a case of pimping others’ pain for views and profit.
cl.bon@nextgen.net.mt