The biggest controversy brewed around The Daily News of New York, which covered up a bloody wound on a victim’s leg in the photograph it ran on its front page on Tuesday.
As photojournalists on blogs and Facebook discussed how changing these photographs violated their standards, the paper’s spokesman issued a statement on Wednesday defending its decision. It said “the rest of the media should have been as sensitive as The Daily News.” The photograph was first noted by Charles Apple, an editor with The Orange County Register in California.
The Atlantic also received complaints from readers for posting on its Web site a photograph of a marathon observer, Jeff Bauman, showing bloody injuries that most news organizations chose to crop. Some organizations that used it also included a note that read “Warning: This image may contain graphic or objectionable content.”
About 15 minutes after posting the image, The Atlantic blurred Mr. Bauman’s face, while keeping the troubling parts of the photograph of his limbs in the shot. Bob Cohn, digital editor for The Atlantic, said that it chose to publish an original photograph over the cropped version other outlets published because it seemed more authentic. The Associated Press offered both versions.
“We thought it was such an honest and powerful representation of the tragic impact of the bombings,” Mr. Cohn said.
Donald R. Winslow, editor of News Photographer Magazine, the monthly publication of the National Press Photographers Association, said that the association’s code of ethics did not allow any altered photographs. It follows the rule that news outlets either publish an image or do not publish it. If parts of the photograph are too graphic, then the image should be cropped.
But Mr. Winslow understood that these specific photographs struck a nerve because they were taken at a highly publicized media event where thousands of people were present with digital devices to record it. Most of the time, in places where these types of gruesome tragedies happen, there are fewer people recording the events.
“Here in America, we see gruesome photographs that come from war, the third world, a horrible accident or come from European and Middle Eastern terrorism. We typically don’t see those pictures on the front page of newspapers,” Mr. Winslow said. “Not since 9/11, we have not had to deal with pictures from the East Coast mainstream media corridor.”
The decision to alter some photographs did not appear to be influenced by concerns from advertisers. Ken Frydman, a spokesman for The Daily News, said that no advertisers asked the paper to alter the photo and had not called to complain. Mr. Cohn said that at The Atlantic he “was not thinking at all about advertising when we made the decision to publish the photo with the warning label and pixelation of the subject’s face.”
Mr. Cohn added that Alan Taylor, editor of The Atlantic’s photo blog In Focus, originally chose to use the more graphic photo, but that he and Mr. Taylor decided before publishing the photo to include a warning sign. They also decided together that the Web site should disguise the subject’s face.
“He obviously was in a very vulnerable situation. He was fully identifiable,” Mr. Cohn said of Mr. Bauman.
But Mr. Winslow said that the decision by The Atlantic to cover Mr. Bauman’s face did little to protect the victim because many outlets ran photographs of him without showing in detail the extent of his injuries.
“It’s closing the barn door after the horse is gone,” Mr. Winslow said. “His face is everywhere.”
After word spread online that The Daily News had altered photographs, one staff photographer who declined to be identified for fear of being fired said that “people were shocked” in the newsroom and added “it was the chatter of the staff.”
Rob Bennett, a photojournalist and adjunct professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, posted on Twitter: “No defense of gore showing up in my circles. Only frustration and disappointment in behavior of @NYDNPhoto dept.” By Wednesday afternoon, The Daily News posted the unaltered version of the photograph on its Web site.
Journalists may have debated the slippery slope of altering these photos, but some readers supported the decision of news outlets to edit these shots. Mr. Cohn said that 24 hours after the bombing took place, more readers supported The Atlantic than not.
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/18/business/media/news-media-weigh-use-of-photos-of-carnage.html?partner=rss&emc=rss