Adjudication No. 1331  (adjudicated October 2006)

The Press Council has dismissed a complaint from Bill Loudon about a NewsMail, Bundaberg, front-page photograph on 10 August 2006. The photograph, showing the point of a knife blade pressed into the base of a wrist, accompanied an article highlighting an increase in teenage girls self-mutilating in Bundaberg.

Mr. Loudon complained it was unethical of the NewsMail to publish an inappropriate, posed photograph about a sensitive matter and then refuse to publish any unfavourable comments from readers. Mr. Loudon was concerned that impressionable teenagers may find the photograph a "guide to mutilation".

On 11 August 2006 the NewsMail published Mr. Loudon's letter about the "hideous" photograph, editing his comment about impressionable teenagers. In a Local View opinion column on the same day, the Editor explained the rationale for using the photograph, commenting any illustration of mutilation was going to be "just as scary as the practice itself". If this resulted in people taking the problem seriously, however, then it was justified.

There is a danger that such confronting images of self-destructive behaviour may encourage some young people to copy that behaviour and newspapers need to exercise caution in their use, particularly on the front page. In this case, however, the NewsMail balanced the risk in publishing the knife-blade photograph with a prominently placed pointer telling young people where they could get help and asking parents and teachers to take the problem of self-mutilation seriously.

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