Cher Phillips

Views on online media and journalism

Online images: the other option for graphic images

September 20, 2007 at 12:04 pm · Filed under Photo, blogging, ethics

I’d be interested if this thought occurred to anyone else when they were doing the reading this week.

I was reading about the selection process and graphic photos, specifically the suicide of R. Budd Dwyer that the editors around the country choose not to run. My initial thought was this: “Oh well, I’ll just Google them on the Internet.”

Maybe it’s me, but I always tend to want to run the more graphic picture. I don’t think it’s because I am grotesque. I just like the idea of getting it all out there for people. I like knowing more, understanding as much as I can about a story. So, I tend think other people want that, too.

Does anyone remember when the Mohammad cartoons that were inciting riots around the world? I followed this closely and was grateful for the sources who put that information out there online so I could find it, see it and know more about the source of all the angry reactions in the world.

I kind of feel this way about a number of images.

I guess I have to wonder if maybe this isn’t part of the role of bloggers and others online, to tell what the newspapers won’t tell to keep from upsetting their readership? Kind of like Sanam’s friend, Arash, who gets images out there that would otherwise be lost to the world.

Thoughts?

7 Comments »

  Curt Franklin wrote @ September 20, 2007 at 12:14 pm

It’s an interesting idea — layered availability, in which the most widely available media is the least graphic, with more intense (explicit? graphic?) images and descriptions available for those who want them. In many ways it’s the model our television system uses, with rising levels of potentially-objectionable content available as the effort required to access the content increases. I’m not really aware of a mainstream publication that does this: the standards of images and words fit for publication tend to be consistent across all the media of a title. It does seem an idea worthy of debate and consideration, though.

  Sanam wrote @ September 20, 2007 at 5:40 pm

Well, I have always been pro having more graphic pictures and everything out there available. But after I saw those execution photos I talked about in the class, I realized not everybody wants to see everything, and some photos can really hurt people. On paper, the reader does not have much of a choice with pictures. If someone opens the newspaper to read the weather forecast, and on the column next to it an article on execution is running a big photo of a man hanged, she probably can’t escape looking at the photo. But on the web, she has the choice not to click on the link of a story, a slide show, or set of photos of the execution. So, maybe not just the bloggers, but the online media in general would be a better forum for publishing photos that might hurt a big group of people. (LOL I can’t believe myself talking about censorship! Those execution pictures must have really hurt me!)

  kablase wrote @ September 21, 2007 at 10:39 am

Unfortunately it has come to the point where alternative media is the outlet for the explicit photos and tough stories. I have seen some evidence of the softening of hard news but I’m hesitant to agree that this is actually the case across the board. Networks are certainly cautious about what images they broadcast to the world, but with the increased use of online media they are able to put controversial images where we can see them without the threat of sensitive groups coming across them on page one. I agree with Sanam that the ability to NOT click on a link to a sensitive story has now become the choice of the reader and gives big media some leeway in what they publish.

Articles to consider:
Readers Respond to Fallujah Photos
Weblogs Threaten and Inform Traditional Journalism

  Journalism Ethics: Do we publish controversial photos? « writer’s block wrote @ September 21, 2007 at 11:46 am

[...] Yesterday we talked about journalism ethics, and specifically photojournalism ethics. Cher’s post got me thinking about what is appropriate and what isn’t when it come to publishing [...]

  soniaa wrote @ September 24, 2007 at 1:11 am

I am so glad you brought up a similar point to that of my own post last week. I too feel that I am not necessarily grotesque because I believe that the more graphic pictures should be published. My take is, if it is out there existing in our world, I want to see it. I do not want to be protected from it. What good does that “protection” really do us? As far as bloggers and other individuals online, it should not be their job to show what the media won’t, but it seems to me that more and more this is the function they seem to be performing. I for one am glad someone out there is doing it!

  philicher wrote @ September 24, 2007 at 10:30 am

I’m working my way through comments this morning… I’ve been walking around since last week thinking about Curt’s comment on layered availability, trying to align it with something I remembered from theory. Only, I keep coming up short. Bringing up theory is probably going to kill the discussion altogether, but I keep thinking about this. I’m wondering if Curt didn’t nail down a new communication theory in his comment, or at least illustrate the point in which three mass communication theories collide.

I always think Gatekeeping Theory when I think of online media and the role of bloggers. Undeniably, there’s an element of gatekeeping in Katie’s comment. I know I want bloggers and online media outlets to flood the gates that the mainstream media won’t. But gatekeeping only goes so far to explain what we’re talking about there, and it’s all on the blog and media end of the deal.

We’re also talking about what WE, the user, wants and doesn’t want in the way of graphic images. Sonia’s like me. She doesn’t want to be protected. That makes me think there might be something in Uses and Gratification.

Although, I know that the whole idea of gratification bothers me in relation to violent images. But some of us have made comments here that we use online media to give us images that traditional media can’t or won’t. Last week, I used “grotesque” off the cuff to describe what I was feeling. I think I meant something closer to “gratuitous.”

Finally, the other model or theory I would throw in here could be normative theory. I pulled out the dreaded McQuail. (Believe it or not, I didn’t sell it back; I’m that much of a geek.) I think maybe the alternative media model of Normative Media Theory fits. As such a strong proponent of free speech, it’s a HUGE thing to say that there’s news she wouldn’t want to see out there. Because of this, I think maybe there’s an element of normative theory in there… separating the shoulds from the should-nots. It seemed obvious to many of us in class the should-nots for why a violent image shouldn’t be portrayed in an artistic or beautiful way.

Can anyone think of other theories that apply to this issue? Curt’s original comparison to networks and cable made me think that there might be something geared to the telecom area that might fit, too.

  britr wrote @ September 25, 2007 at 8:45 pm

I, too, love the graphic image. Sometimes, I feel like its my inability as a writer to incite enough emotion. Maybe I’m not a good enough writer, but I also truly believe in the image, and I believe our society are by-and-large image-oriented. I think journalism is meant to elicit a response. Maybe we don’t know, or can’t control, what that response will be (e.g., the riot-inducing cartoons you mentioned), but we should at least get a reaction. And photos do that. Typeface, no matter how poignant the content, doesn’t have the same effect. I do understand, although I don’t always agree with, the rationale behind not running graphic photos in the newspaper. So if our print society is going to operate under these auspices, we do have a responsibility, as bloggers and online journalists, to tell the untold story. Newspapers can blame space issues. We can’t.


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