On the front page of our local newspaper yesterday was the picture of a man whose small daughter had just died. He was obviously bawling his eyes out, and his face was distorted in a look of pure misery. When I saw this picture, I quickly looked away because I felt I was intruding on an intensely private moment of personal grief. What bugs me here is that the newspaper felt that a picture of the freshly-grieving father would be appropriate to put on the front page, instead of a picture of the girl in happier days, or something less appallingly intimate. If I read a headline and see that a little girl is dead, I know that the family is crazy with grief; I don’t need to see a picture of it to get that.
I just want to stand up and say; this isn’t right. Media, stop doing it, because it is wrong and you should know that. And now, back to the real world where the media industry does as it pleases and answers to no one.
The Oklahoma bombing is a good example of this. There was a widely-used photo of a rescue worker carrying a little girl who was killed. Subsequently, some jackass company looking to cash in made a “commemerative statue” of the event using this image and hawked it on TV. Her parents were horrified and didn’t want them using a likeness of their daughter’s body to make money (even if a portion was being donated to a relief fund of some kind), and who can blame them. Would you want to walk into someones house and see a statue of your dead daughter? Of course not. And of course, they refused to stop making them saying that the image was public domain. Just awful.
A few weeks ago, a ten year old boy was stabbed to death in south London. His father came over from Nigeria to grieve with the rest of the family. The police took him to see the spot where his son had been killed, and the TV news producers thought it would make great TV.
As the camera zoomed in on the father sobbing and crying out in pain, the TV journalist commented on how the police were being so understanding and polite and keeping their distance from this man’s private grief.
Surely the TV producers must have seen the horrible irony. Even though they didn’t have the decency to stay away, they must have realised that it was a bit ‘odd’ to comment on private grief while training a camera upon it.
A few years ago, someone from a town near here was killed while bullriding; he fell off and the bull stepped on his head. He died a few days later. Of course, every station’s news department used footage of this as a leader for their broadcasts for days on end! Finally, my wife had enough and called the station that she was watching. They transferred her to the reporter covering the story, who tried to defend herself by pointing out that the other stations were freezing the frame but did get the station to play the segment less after that.
I’M SORRY, but if I’m ever fatally crushed by anything, I hope the reporters will give my family the privacy they deserve and refrain from making the rest of the public sick.
Beyond that,
Ten years ago a San Antonio station walked a handheld camera through the house where someone was stabbed, showing the trail of blood pulsing up and down the hallway walls. At least they didn’t pretend to care about the victim or their family when they did it…
I think all the chickenshits who want to see the blood and guts and misery should go get themselves jobs in one of the emergency fields - fire, police, ambulance or hospital worker, and get their fix that way, instead of creating a market for sensational, bloody journalism that we all get subjected to. That way, they can see all the gore that they want in a positive way (and, having worked with emergency wards myself, I suspect it might even curb their interest in such things.)
IIRC, when those women were killed in Yosemite, the media didn’t show pictures of th victims until several weeks afterwards, to give their family members time to grieve. When they did show pictures, it was with the familes’ blessing. So somtimes the media does take the high road.
What about that idiot who made the video for the police after the Columbine shootings, edited in Sara McLahlan’s “I Will Remember You,” and attempted to sell it? Even McLahlan
was horrified and disgusted-I believe she sued him along with the other members of the family-saying she didn’t want her song associated with something so vile.
This is why if I had kids, I’d rather they play videogames than watch the news. At least when someone “dies” in a game, it’s just a bunch of polygons (or pixels, because as the news keeps pointing out, Doom is STILL the number one murder-sim, heh). I don’t watch the news because it’s too depressing, and I don’t want to be bombarded with footage of brutal deaths and everything. Ignorance is bliss and all that jazz, heh…
I think the worst part about the news is how apathetic it is…It’s like (grim, serious voice) “40 people were murdered in their sleep last night, and the police have no leads. (instant switch to a cheery voice) The weather this weekend will be nice and sunny with only a 10% chance of rain.”
…no idea if that’s considered a hijack. My apologies if it is, as this is only my second post, heh…
- Tsugumo
Several years ago I was in a pretty bad car accident. The emergency people were all gathered 'round me, putting me on a stretcher (luckily I wasn’t really hurt that bad, just a precaution in case I had injured my neck or back (I hadn’t)) when suddenly a photographer squirmed his way through to take my picture. Kind of pissed me off, I imagine he worked for, or was hoping to sell the picture to some local newspaper. I wonder if he was disappointed to find out I wasn’t hurt that bad after all?
I think I remember the women’s pictures on the news a lot before their bodies had been found, when there was still a chance they could have been found alive. They may have stopped with the pictures after the bodies were found, but if they did, I’d be surprised. (Pleasantly surprised.)
When I was nine years old, two of my uncles drowned in a boating accident. The media picked up on this, because, I suppose, it was especially tragic that two brothers died.
It took three days to find their bodies. I was at home with a baby sitter . . . I don’t really remember where my family was, but I do remember the shock and horror of seeing my uncle’s body dragged from the water on the nightly news. It has never left me. They played the footage endlessly in their promotional commercials. There is nothing worse, as a child shocked and dazed by grief to watch your uncle, the man who gave you piggy-back rides and quarters to stop crying when you skinned your knee, dragged from the water, lifeless, again and again, and again.
A few years later, my best friend was slowly, and agonizingly dying of bone cancer. A local newspaper reporter did a story on her struggle. I was interviewed, and I will never, to my dying day, forget the reporter’s question: “Your friend is going to die real, real soon. How do you feel about that?” My response was, “How the fuck do you think I feel?” She responded by asking if, since my friend was in so much pain, if I wished she would die, just to end it. I hung up on her. The story was a hideous thing to read. It went into paragraphs decribing my friend’s screams of agony until her pain medication kicked in. I still have the article, but have never managed to read it in its entierty.
I know there are compassionate, decent reporters out there, but no matter what happens, I will never speak to a media person again. They are vultures.
I remember from many years ago…
Network news.
Scene: Back of a woman, looking out at a flooding river.
Voice over of a reporter telling us that she lost her house, husband and ALL of her 4 children to the flood.
Enter reporter, mike extended into her face “Tell us how you feel right now.”
She turned, just long enough to look him in the face, and clearly said “Get the fuck away from me”.
I don’t even think they bleeped it.
All I could think, even as a child, was DUH!