# Since when was broadcasting the dead bodies and faces of 5 year olds OK? **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [December 28, 2004, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/since-when-was-broadcasting-the-dead-bodies-and-faces-of-5-year-olds-ok/281846 "2004-12-28T00:31:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![rjung](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/45deac/32.png) [@rjung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjung)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2004, 6:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/since-when-was-broadcasting-the-dead-bodies-and-faces-of-5-year-olds-ok/281846/41 "2004-12-29T06:09:16Z")
The simple rule of thumb: _Demeaning pictures of Americans:_ Ugh, don’t you dare show that! Have some respect! _Demeaning pictures of foreigners:_ Hey, no problem, they ain’t us. Just flash back to Iraq’s videos of American POWs (don’t you dare!) vs. photos of Uday and Qusay Hussein’s corpses (no problem). This is nothing new, unfortunately. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2004, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/since-when-was-broadcasting-the-dead-bodies-and-faces-of-5-year-olds-ok/281846/42 "2004-12-29T16:06:28Z")
> [@Misnomer](#): > > I mentally started to compose _such_ a scathing reply when I read this . . . and then I kept reading and got the sarcasm. :smack: 🙂 Perhaps you have learned to NEVER take what a Southern Woman of a Certain Age says at face value without close examination. 😉 I have avoided visuals of the devestation because I have to maintain my “manly composure,” and that goes straight out the window when I see dead children. I am keeping the magnitude of the tragedy an abstraction at arm’s length so I can continue functioning. Therefore I get all my news about it from the radio but the mental images, which I know cannot compare with the reality, still intrude on my carefully shielded heart. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2004, 10:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/since-when-was-broadcasting-the-dead-bodies-and-faces-of-5-year-olds-ok/281846/43 "2004-12-29T22:47:20Z")
Look…with what will probably be close to 100000 dead people, it seems like you would be hard pressed to photograph anything that won’t have a dead body in it. > [@rjung](#): > > The simple rule of thumb: > _Demeaning pictures of Americans:_ Ugh, don’t you dare show that! Have some respect! > _Demeaning pictures of foreigners:_ Hey, no problem, they ain’t us. > > Just flash back to Iraq’s videos of American POWs (don’t you dare!) vs. photos of Uday and Qusay Hussein’s corpses (no problem). This is nothing new, unfortunately. You’re an idiot… :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2004, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/since-when-was-broadcasting-the-dead-bodies-and-faces-of-5-year-olds-ok/281846/44 "2004-12-30T00:45:28Z")
Today, I saw a dump truck, filling a trench with bodies, and a power shovel digging as fast as it could to keep up with the trucks. One body, in the face of that?!? :smack: ---
**Author:** ![Rilchiam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/2bfe46/32.png) [@Rilchiam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rilchiam)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2004, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/since-when-was-broadcasting-the-dead-bodies-and-faces-of-5-year-olds-ok/281846/45 "2004-12-30T00:47:59Z")
> [@Bosda Di'Chi of Tricor](#): > > Today, I saw a dump truck, filling a trench with bodies, and a power shovel digging as fast as it could to keep up with the trucks. :eek: ☹ ::😢:: ---
**Author:** ![OtakuLoki](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ac8455/32.png) [@OtakuLoki](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OtakuLoki)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2004, 2:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/since-when-was-broadcasting-the-dead-bodies-and-faces-of-5-year-olds-ok/281846/46 "2004-12-30T02:36:54Z")
> [@Bosda Di'Chi of Tricor](#): > > Today, I saw a dump truck, filling a trench with bodies, and a power shovel digging as fast as it could to keep up with the trucks. > > One body, in the face of that?!? :smack: Let’s especially consider: this is a tragedy that overwhelms the ability of the human mind to really grasp it. With the exceptions of several posters, most of us have had no contact with people from many of the areas affected - and that distance makes the numbers even _more_ unreal to many people. By using images of a child, or the frantic attempts to dispose of the bodies of the dead before they cause epidemics, there is a chance of the simple shock getting through the realm of abstractions that so many of us are viewing this through, to convey some of the human reality involved with a disaster of this magnitude. The use of single, horrifying, image for emotional short hand is a long tradition in news. And it’s lasted because it works. From Little Miss 1565, to all the other images that have become ingrained on the collective consciousness, this tactic keeps being used again and again. Because everyone can approach the image of a single victim, especially a victim that is of an age where the assumption of innocence is going to be unquestioned. Unfortunately, I can’t disagree with **eleanorigby** ’s estimate of the reasons for the attempts to shock viewers. I’m simply pointing out that as long as it keeps working, it will be kept being used. And some of the reasons will be altrusitic, some will be neutral (for want of a better word), and some will make one wish that one belonged to a nice, civilized species, like, say, hyenas. ☹ ---
**Author:** ![Mdm.President](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@Mdm.President](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mdm.President)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2004, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/since-when-was-broadcasting-the-dead-bodies-and-faces-of-5-year-olds-ok/281846/47 "2004-12-30T02:55:43Z")
I don’t have time to type much. But some of you just aren’t getting it, so… Fuzzy Fuzzy Fuzzy… The whole thing saddens me, obviously. And a few of the ways in which peoples pain is being exploited offends me. But what THIS THREAD is about is that the media didn’t Fuzz the face of the boy. I haven’t seen an image linked to yet that showed the FACE of a DEAD CHILD so clearly, like it was a fucking money shot. It pisses me off that apparently ‘foreign’ children don’t deserve the same respect because their parents don’t have the means to sue the crap out whoever is responsible. Fuzzy Fuzzy Fuzzy… ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Mudd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f14d63/32.png) [@Larry\_Mudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Mudd)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2004, 4:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/since-when-was-broadcasting-the-dead-bodies-and-faces-of-5-year-olds-ok/281846/48 "2004-12-30T04:15:33Z")
**Mdm. President** , I think I can offer a little bit of personal insight here. My brother’s death was documented by a local news crew. His death wasn’t newsworthy in a personal sense, but it was illustrative of something that has continuing newsworthiness – he died of an overdose in Vancouver’s drug-plagued Downtown East Side. Video of him being pulled by EMTs, half-naked, out of an SRO hotel room, became stock footage that has been used for years whenever the general subject makes its way back into the news. No, his face isn’t blurred. Why _should_ it be? He had a face. He was beautiful. My family has never considered suing the TV station. They aren’t “exploiting our grief.” Blurring a face out (or even not showing the footage at all) would do nothing to mitigate the grief, which is palpable. When that sort of thing happens to your family, everything comes back in the most immediate way imaginable, whenever the general subject is on the table. That’s natural – and it sure doesn’t mean the subject should never be raised. Tragedy is something that happens to _people_. People have faces. If you don’t acknowledge that, you abstract things to the point where it isn’t real to people. What is “80,000?” It’s pretty fucking remote, is what it is. Putting faces to numbers gives us a place to start comprehending the enormity of what has happened. Nobody who’s lost someone in a disaster is thinking “How _horrible_ that the world has seen the face of my dead child.” It doesn’t compound the grief. It’s a document of something that happened. ---
**Author:** ![Tracy\_Lord](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ec9cab/32.png) [@Tracy\_Lord](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tracy_Lord)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2004, 7:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/since-when-was-broadcasting-the-dead-bodies-and-faces-of-5-year-olds-ok/281846/49 "2004-12-30T07:35:07Z")
> [@Larry Mudd](#): > > Tragedy is something that happens to _people_. People have faces. If you don’t acknowledge that, you abstract things to the point where it isn’t real to people. Yes. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/since-when-was-broadcasting-the-dead-bodies-and-faces-of-5-year-olds-ok/281846.md?page=2)