TBO.com News

Graphic Details Don't Always Serve A Purpose

By JANET WEAVER jweaver@tampatrib.com

Published: Jul 13, 2005

We awoke Thursday to news of a terrorist attack, this time in London.

Images flashed onto television screens of victims making their way to safety. Many of them had bloodstains on their white business shirts or smears of blood on their faces.

Given the severity of this attack, the number of awful images coming into newsrooms was small. In large part, that had to do with the fact that the explosions took place underground, where news photographers had no access to document what had happened.

Still, editors across the country were confronted again with the question of what to publish. Which images showed the scope of the attack? Which crossed the boundary of taste and would serve only to shock and not to inform? How graphic should stories be in describing the wounds of the victims?

On the one hand, journalists shouldn't sanitize the news, diminishing in the process the truth of what happened. On the other hand, journalists shouldn't gratuitously publish explicit images or words that repulse readers rather than enlighten them.

Where's That Fine Line?

So what's gratuitous? Some readers complained last year that a photograph we published of a wounded American soldier being carried on a stretcher to receive aid was gratuitous. We know that war is bloody and violent and that people die, readers told me. They didn't need to see that fact depicted so personally on the front page of the newspaper.

The counterargument, of course, was that because war is bloody and violent and people die, part of covering the reality of it is occasionally to depict that fact in strong images or words. To avoid doing so allows us to avoid thinking about the sacrifice of people who sign up to serve our country.

An example closer to home appeared in the pages of the Tribune on Thursday. In writing about the arrest of a suspect in the hit-and- run killing of 2-year-old Demontaye Simmons, we quoted a woman describing the child's injuries. ``His intestines was hanging out as long as my arm,'' she said.

I'd argue that was a detail that shocked rather than informed. We know that when a 2-year-old is run over by a car, the injuries will be catastrophic. That's something we can comprehend without the graphic description.

If So, When?

So how do we decide when to publish images and words that shock us? There's no easy equation, but I have two rules of thumb:

We should consider the scope of the event. Newspapers across the country published photographs of 1-year-old Bailey Almon's broken body being carried by a firefighter after the Oklahoma City bombing. It was the kind of photo that journalists would shy away from if the child had been killed in an auto accident or a house fire. Because she was a victim of an act of domestic terrorism, the image carried symbolic weight beyond the literal image. It helped us understand the depth of the cruelty involved in this bombing, which targeted innocent victims of all ages.

We should consider the public issues embedded in the story. Images and descriptions from the front lines help us understand what's at stake when the country is at war and inform our ongoing public dialogue. These images and descriptions don't have to serve a particular political agenda, either. The same image may be viewed by some as inspiring support for a war or a policy, while others may take a completely opposite view.

Journalists must be careful with words and images that depict pain and suffering. We must be truthful in our reporting, but we also must respect the humanity of those who find themselves in the news in the midst of personal tragedy.

Janet Weaver is executive editor of The Tampa Tribune. Call the Citizens` Voice automated voice mailbox at 1-800-527-2758; write to Citizens` Voice, P.O. Box 191, Tampa FL 33601; or e-mail voice@TBO.com.