Every news event, of course, has its own special ethical dilemmas. With 9/11, the issue was with the people falling or jumping to their deaths from the towers (showing those images vs. not showing those images) and repeated video playback of the planes crashing into the towers, which some claimed was too frequent for such violent images. Each newsroom weighed the issues and made their own judgment. The Iraq war gave us "embeds," or embedded reporters, and then the issue of photographing flag-draped American caskets returning to the United States. With World War II, a war that claimed nearly half a million American soldiers, one of the issues was with photographing dead GIs in combat. LIFE magazine famously ran George Strock's photo of a dead American on Buna Beach seven months after the photo was taken due to censorship from the Office of War Information. At the time, it was the first photo of its kind to make it into print.
As with these news events, the death of Bin laden comes with it its own newspaper dilemmas. The dilemmas themselves fall way outside the West Valley View's coverage area, but the core principles within them are another issue entirely. Here are some of the issues that are now being discussed by media analysts and editors:
• Gruesome photos of dead bodies — Consider the issue with the so-called "death photo," the shot of Bin Laden dead after the Navy Seals stormed his compound and killed him. The West Valley View, a community newspaper, would have no reason to run such a photo. But would the West Valley View run a similar photo if the conditions happened in Goodyear or, say, Avondale? Answering that question is difficult. There is no doubt that the photo would be newsworthy, but would its newsworthiness offset its gruesomeness? Based on the statements made by the people who have actually seen the photo — some say it's quite violent, others say it's less gruesome than they expected — it's unlikely that a photo of a dead terrorist would make it into a community newspaper like the View. The New York Times, maybe, but not the View. We like to call ourselves a family newspaper, and such a photo runs against that idea.
But to better understand the story, let's take Bin Laden out of the equation. Would the View run the photo of a dead body? We have in the past. In one of our more controversial issues, the View ran a photo of a dead woman killed in a car accident, her lifeless body, face obscured, partially hanging out of a car window. The newspaper felt the photo was newsworthy because it showed the danger of traveling on what, at the time, was a notorious stretch of roadway. Since then, there have been other instances we've run photos of bodies covered with blankets or being moved by police. These have usually generated heated responses from readers who felt the photos were inappropriate. As a policy, we currently don't run photos of bodies. There might be exceptions to the rule, but none have come up recently.
• Removing elements from the picture — This was covered in a previous post on Click. It can be seen here. But there's an update to the story. I was reading the New York Times' coverage of the Brooklyn paper's creative editing of the photo of President Obama watching the raid on Bin Laden's compound. The New York Times' nearly didn't print the original photo due to a policy it has to not run photos that have been edited. The edit, you ask? Well, there's a paper document on Hillary Clinton's laptop that was pixelated, probably due to classified information pertaining to the Bin Laden raid. The Times made an exception and ran the photo even with the White House edit. (The photo with the a close-up of the pixelated paper is below.) The issue doesn't come up very often at the West Valley View, but we don't run photos — those shot by View photographers and also submitted photos from readers — that are manipulated in any way.
• Staging events — After President Obama gave his speech announcing the killing of Bin Laden, a disturbing trend at the White House was made public. Still photographers were allowed to photograph Obama staging the speech. The photos that appeared in newspapers the next day look like they were shot from the original speech but they weren't. The photographers, to their credit, identified within the cutlines that the president was rehearsing his speech. It can be assumed that the White House chose to stage the photos because the shutter clicks might be picked up by the cameras during the live speech, and it would also be distracting for the president who would be addressing millions of people. After complaints from newspapers and after taking criticism around the country, the White House ended the practice of staging speeches for photographers. Don't blame Obama, though: the practice goes back a long time, back even to Harry Truman and Franklin Roosevelt, both of whom staged radio speeches for photographers.At the View, staging photos is a big no-no. If we don't capture an event as it's happening, then we don't stage it for a photo later. Occasionally we'll find out about a news event after it has happened and we'll return to the scene of the event and have the people pose near the location for a photo. But we will never act out the event again.
• Top secret helicopter — The Seal Team that killed Bin Laden arrived to his compound in top secret stealth helicopters. We know this only because they had to blow one up after it was damaged, and the tail section survived to be photographed the next day before Pakistani authorities removed it. The photos have generated a lot of speculation about top secret military hardware.
With Luke Air Force Base in our backyard, the issue of classified military hardware is more common in the West Valley than you might think. I've shot a number of assignments at Luke where our military escorts have asked us not to photograph sensitive information. I've specifically been told not to photograph the inside cockpit of the base's F-16s. The cockpit is not classified or top secret, but does contain sensitive information that the Air Force doesn't want printed in newspapers. I suppose there's nothing keeping me from shooting the images without approval, but it would serve us no news purpose. It would effectively end our working relationship with Luke for nothing more than a photo that is meaningless. As for the real classified hardware at Luke, I imagine photographers aren't allowed near any of it.• Fake photos — It took only several hours after the announcement of Bin Laden's death for fake photos of his body to turn up online. Some newspapers actually ran the photos. Most were skeptical. Just as quick as they went up they were debunked as phonies. The damage was already done, though: millions had already seen the photo. Especially embarrassing was the distribution of the the photo through text messages by members of congress. If editors at the View think a photo is a phony, it won't run. We're pretty good digital sleuths and there are some easy ways to identify fake photos.
The Bin Laden story still has legs in the media, so expect even more issues to come up regarding photojournalism. Stay tuned.
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