Picture This

Our task for this week in Journalism 420 is to view a few questionable pictures and decide whether to use them in a newspaper.

The first task was to decide which of the four photographs I would use that were taken of Pennsylvania treasurer R. Budd Dwyer’s suicide at a press conference. Personally, I would approve to use pictures 1a and 2a on the website. Picture 2a, the photo with Dwyer holding the gun in both hands near his chest, is the best picture to use. The gun is more visible. This facial expression tells part of the story, and it motivates the reader to find out more. Pictures 3a and 4a are too graphic for a typical newspaper and do not encourage readers to learn more about the suicide. In simple terms, they are repulsive.

In addition to looking at 1987 suicide photos, I looked at several other questionable photos. I decided what pictures should run by answering circumstantial questions in my head. Does the picture tell a story? Would this cause even more unnecessary grief for family and friends? Answering these questions helped me to analyze and find my decisions.

Here are my thoughts for each individual photo:

Picture 1: Boy lost his dog
This picture tells a story without words. The little boy has lost his pet, a friend, a playmate. Although the picture almost seems intruding, it would work well for the correct story. I decided to run the picture because it is a pet, not a human who was killed. It is not graphic with blood and guts everywhere, but tells a story well.

Picture 2: A child is the victim of the water
The emotion the photographer caught on the faces of his family was unbelievable, but I would not run the photo. If the photographer cropped the faces of the people crying and left out the dead body, then I would use the photo. The photo, as it is, is too intruding and seems disrespectful to the victim and his family.

Picture 3: Newspaper plant killing
I would definitely not use this photo. This photo is not needed to further explain the happenings in the newspaper printing plant. In my opinion, it would be disrespectful to the victim, his/her family and friends to use the photo. It is utterly disheartening. If a photo does not tell more about an event, then there is no need to waste the space, which is the case for this photo.

Picture 4: Boy and the fence
Wow, what a picture. Because the boy ended up being OK, I would decide to run the picture. It is not gory, but it does show how the boy harmed himself on the fence. This picture is worth a thousand words. No amount of writing will show readers what this picture does. If the boy would have passed away from the accident, I would absolutely rethink my decision.

Picture 5: Mardi Gras gone wrong
No, it is not appropriate to run this photo even though “all parts” are covered up. This picture shows nothing but a naked female body with lots of males grabbing for the body. Words are able to tell the story without using this degrading photo. Newspapers provide readers with news not trashy tabloid pictures.

Once I analyzed each photo, I found a few trends in my decision making. If dead bodies were in the photo, it should not be used. If the pictures helped illustrate the event, then the photo should be ran if it was not disrespectful. The one photo that was the most difficult was with the family finding their son from a drowning accident. The photograph showed so much emotion and told the story so well, however, there was a dead body. The picture was great, but the dead body seemed to be too private for the world to see. Overall, I found that if I answered a few simple questions the decisions were relatively simple to make.