Ethics: Photo Response

After looking at all the photos in Journalism lecture, I came to the conclusion I would not run any of them. Well, not without the person's permission.

If the little boy's family is okay with me posting that moment b/w their dog and their son than I would post it. Same goes if the woman in the Mardi Gras picture if she gave me her permission. But those are the only two pictures I would run with permission.

The other four are disturbing. Three of them are of dead people (well 1 is a dying man) and that is something that may not sit well with readers. Little children look at newspapers whether searching through them for the comics or using them to play with their Silly Putty (you know you all did it!). Dead bodies and suicide are something they should not see nor something anyone NEEDS to see. I would be sooo angry if that was my family crying over my brother's dead body. That is not something I would want to relive when looking at the paper and I do not think it adds anything to the story except sensationalism. The man with his jaw through the gate is just disturbing and might affect people with weak stomachs.

It really dosen't matter to me if the events are local or national. To publish the pictures of dead bodies is selfish and in my opinion, just a way to sell more newspapers. It is also EXTREMELY unethical unless given permission. Yes, even for the suicidal man at the press conference. He was obviously okay with his suicide being public, but he was sick. Can you imagine being the wife or the mother of that man and seeing a picture of your son with a bullet going through his brain on the front page of a newspaper? That's not something anyone should have to experience.

As for the question of where and how to play the photo have any bearing on my decision, I would say only for the Mardi Gras picture. I would want to run that photo (if given the woman's permission) to show the effects of events like these and how dangerous they are. As a young woman that goes to parities occasionally, when I saw that photo, I was horrified. It was definitely the photo I struggled with the most. It could really strike home in a good way to young woman about taking precautions when going to big drinking events (and in my own anger-driven emotion, it would nice to have those men's mother's, employers, girlfriends ect. open the newspaper and see catching the men red-handed because they deserve it). But only in that pretense and WITH the woman's permission. If I was her, I would never want these photo's to run in a newspaper. But if she was okay with it, than so be it.