We Can Always Edit that Out Later

Sara Michael Lucas
sl165905@ohio.edu

As illustrated in David Perlmutter’s article “Images of Horror from Fallujah” ethical issues arise when photographs, especially graphic or violent photographs, are used in reporting the news. Should this photograph be published? Would people get offended? Is it obscene? How far is too far? Why do journalists even need to worry about photo issues? How does a media outlet decide what gets published?

After September 11th a few editors chose to remove images of the World Trade Center Towers from movies, television shows and computer games. Even now it seems odd to see the towers in a movie. Why would such images need to be filtered out? Can’t the American public handle the image? When it was happening people were exposed to much more devastating photos than just the shadowy blue outlines of two giant towers in the background of a movie. I find this censorship a very interesting statement about the perception of images in the media.

A crusader going simply by the initials JR devoted a Web site (10048: The World Trade Center Movie Project) to listing films where the towers have been deleted and where they still appear. The top of his site has an image of the Twin Towers: a digitally enhanced, artfully blurry image where the crowd in the foreground dominates. A true, clear photo does not appear on the site. Is JR censoring him or herself? Is this campaign problematic?

Perlmutter makes the argument that any one can see any image at any time and that is why media outlets need to be very selective in the photos they run. Elementary school kids don’t need to see images of war. While I largely agree, I also feel that as journalists we have a duty to report the truth. As long as images are honest (meaning not edited or computer generated) and within good taste (meaning an editor should use discretion and obscenity rules when selecting photographs) I feel that they should be disseminated. On the issue of children seeing scarring images, perhaps the most damaging should be left to the inside of the paper; leave the clean stuff for the front page. The public can handle that.

The photo shown above is an image I borrowed from Google Images . As I looked at it on Google, then again here on this post, I wondered if I should republish it. I honestly had to think about it for a second. Perhaps this idea of censoring images goes deeper than I thought.