Case Studies

Case Study 7 (March 2003):
Blood in the Streets

The image and article

The Sydney Morning Herald
Wednesday, 6 March 1996

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Complaint 1 - Scott H - 6 March 1996

I am writing to you with a degree of concern over the photograph published on the cover of The Sydney Morning Herald, Wed 6th of March 1996.

I am aware that I am not alone in these concerns.

My complaint specifically is as follows.

The photograph is of such a graphic nature that I am personally shocked and affronted by it. I believe that I am perhaps less subject to this reaction than general yet I find it difficult to view this photograph with out being shocked and affronted.

The positioning of this photograph on the front page of your paper is clearly set to cause a reaction. Perhaps the reaction is different to what was envisaged at your editorial meetings.

The use of colour in this specific case enhances the graphic nature of the photograph.

The photograph in my opinion is not necessary to illustrate the article to which it relates. May I contrast this with the photograph published last year of the child in the arms of the fireman at the Oklahoma bombing. Whilst this was emotive I believe it carried an illustrative effect which enhanced that story.

The photograph could clearly have been cropped to a level appropriate to generally acceptable standards. That it wasn't suggests to me that The Sydney Morning Herald wishes to expand the boundaries of acceptance for material of a graphic nature.

In writing this letter to you I hope to draw your attention to the boundaries of acceptance for material such as you have published. I believe that this photograph is outside these boundaries and would request that you take action to redress this situation.

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Complaint 2 - Malcolm S - 9 March 1996

I would like to register a complaint against a photograph that appeared on the front page of The Sydney Morning Herald on the 6 March 1996. A copy of the photo is attached. I feel that this extremely graphic, large colour photo crossed the border of decency and taste in its depiction of the aftermath of a suicide bombing, clearly showing the mutilated, burnt and bloodied body of one of the victims.

This unheralded, prominent, sensationalist photo was front page and delivered into many households, where I am sure it was seen by many young people and would have had a very strong impact on them. Who can measure the psychological effects on impressionable minds of such graphic real horror?

I am not writing for a political reason. I am a professional member of the media of some thirty years standing. I have been a soldier in the Israeli army and I currently have daughter undertaking a youth leadership course in Jerusalem, so I have strong reasons for the terrorists to be condemned yet I am morally certain that the SMH has transgressed ethically by publishing such a photo.

Possibly the staff of the Herald were trying to bring home the reality of the aftermath of terrorism. Maybe they were seduced by having the ability to print sensational colour photos to increase circulation. Who knows!

I have subscribed to the SMH for many years. I phoned and complained, was listened to courteously and my complaint registered. I was told that there had already been many complaints about the photo. The acting chief of staff who spoke to me was not aware why the paper had chosen to run the photograph.

I believe that the Press Council should signal where the line needs to be drawn with depictions of violence and carnage. I would appreciate hearing from you.

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Editor's reply - 19 March 1996

I refer to your letters of March 8 and March 14, 1996 with which were enclosed complaints against The Sydney Morning Herald to the Australian Press Council by Mr Scott H and Mr Malcolm S. Both complaints concern a photograph published on the front page of the Herald on March 6, 1996.

May I start by stating what may seem to be the obvious - considerable care and debate was involved in the decision to publish this photograph on Page One of the Herald.

All involved were keenly aware of its awful impact. It was clear that most readers would find the photograph disturbing and that some readers would find it offensive. Only the flint-hearted could fail to be moved by the sight of innocent bystanders killed and maimed by a suicide bomber in the streets of Tel Aviv.

Given the nature of the picture, there had to be over-arching editorial justification for its use. There was no doubt among the Herald's editorial executives that the gravity and scale of the Tel Aviv attack fully justified using the photograph on the front page.

This was, the council will recall, the fourth terrorist atrocity in Israel in nine days; it was the third involving civilians; some 60 people had died in the four incidents. The street-bombing killed 14 people including children (although the Herald did not use any photographs showing child victims). The attack occurred in the early hours of March 5, Sydney time, and was widely and graphically reported on television news broadcasts throughout the day and the evening. The Herald 's photograph was an essential part of our coverage in the of March 6; it illustrated and reinforced the report it accompanied on the brutality of the bombing.

Mr H says he is "shocked and affronted" by the photograph. The Herald believes that most of its readers were shocked and affronted by the fact that innocent pedestrians crossing a street in a Western democracy - a country with which many Australians have a close affinity - could be killed or maimed in this way.

We do not believe the use of the photograph breached the council's Principle 3 which refers, in our view, only to the privacy and sensibilities of the people in the picture - i.e., those who were caught up in an awful drama on a Tel Aviv street. For your information, incidentally, the picture was marked "ISRAEL OUT" - it was not distributed within Israel.

As to Principle 6, we reject the claim that the decision to publish was a lapse of taste "so repugnant as to bring the freedom of the press into disrepute or be extremely offensive to the public". In this instance, taste simply has nothing to do with it. This was a barbaric act of terrorism and barbarism is seldom tasteful. [Editor's note: This refers to the previous wording of Principle 6.]

Mr H says the photograph "could clearly have been cropped to a level appropriate to generally acceptable standards". That is simply not so; cropping was not an option. The decision was whether to run the photograph or not and, for the reasons stated above, the paper decided to run it.

Much of the above applies equally to Mr Malcolm S's complaint.

With respect, we cannot accept Mr S's claim that the photograph "crossed the border of decency and taste". We certainly do not accept that our use of it was sensationalist.

We agree that the image would have had a very strong impact on young people but believe that impact would have been just as powerful for their elders. Age was not a consideration here for we knew that all of our readers would be deeply moved by the image.

We do think, however, that Mr S has raised one point about reaction to the use of the picture - namely, that it was published in colour.

For The Sydney Morning Herald, the publication of this picture in colour was not technically possible until very recently when the printing of the Herald was moved from the old plant at Broadway to a new colour-offset plant at Chullora.

We were aware that this photograph would have considerably more impact in colour than it would have done if printed in black-and-white. Every modern newspaper is coming to grips with this fact and bears it in mind during picture selection.

On the same evening that we at the Herald were deciding to use the Tel Aviv street image in colour on our front page of March 6, our colleagues at The Australian newspaper were making a similar decision on a picture which was quite as graphic as that which we used.

We aren't arguing that what we did was right because our opposition did the same but that the senior editorial staffs of two respected newspapers, faced with a tough pictorial call, came to the same conclusion.

Two further points: first, we did receive complaints - telephone calls and letters - from readers who believed we should not have published the photograph. We published a letter from a nine-year-old girl because we thought it representative of the complaints we received, and because it was, in its own way, as moving a comment on the incident as was the image.

Finally, may I draw the Council's attention to two of its previous adjudications.

In Adjudication 596 of September 1992, the council declined to uphold a complaint against the Adelaide Sunday Mail which had published on its front page "a large photograph of a dead child, one of seven members of two related families who were washed from rocks by a freak wave ...".

The council commented: "There was a strong public interest in the story which tends to outweigh the impact on the sensibilities of the public at large."

In Adjudication 842 of February 1996, the council dismissed a complaint against the Gold Coast Bulletin which had published on its front page a picture showing police "standing on a riverbank above what the accompanying story says is part of a torso and bound arms of a partly clothed body".

The council said the picture was "normal newspaper coverage". Allegations that the picture's publication would cause severe trauma, interfere with parenting and "normalise" murder/horror were found to be extravagant.

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Attachment 1: Published letter

TEL AVIV BOMB

I did not like the photograph of the bombing you put on your front page (Herald, March 6). It made me sick and it made me cry to look at such a sad thing.

Samantha Hart, Age 9,
Waratah.
March 6

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Attachment 2 - Report of the Washington Post's Ombudsman

QUESTIONABLE CHOICES
By GENEVA OVERHOLSER

Where is the line between a powerful moving photo and a painfully invasive one?

A couple of readers felt The Washington Post crossed it on Monday's Metro cover, with its heart-rending photo of a woman whose sister and nephew had been found dead after months of disappearance.

"It was just too raw," one reader said, noting also a second photo inside the section, again showing the swiving sister weeping, this time with another family member.

Strong news photos pack a forceful punch. They can arouse emotions readers aren't sure they want to feel. Yet it is this very effectiveness in telling stories that makes them so valuable and so important to newspapers.

l believe, generally, that readers are well served when editors are not timid about their use. Still, there is a point at which nakedness of emotion distances readers rather than reaching them. Perhaps subtlety is an aid to conveying terrible grief. It does seem to me that it would have helped here.

[Overholser is ombudsman of The Washington Post]

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Questions to consider

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