Distasteful Images

Jack R Herman looks at the ways in which the Council has ruled on complaints about the publication of offensive or 'graphic' images in newspapers.

Bodies falling from the World Trade Centre. An assassinated Dutch politician. A Vietnamese prisoner being cold-bloodedly shot by his interrogator. Two victims of the Bali bombing fleeing from the destroyed nightclub. A mangled body in a car wreck. The street scene after another murder-suicide bomber has exploded a device.

These images are bound to cause offence, but are they in breach of the Press Council's principles?

As Zoltan Kovacs noted in an article in the August 1997 APC News,

A picture of a fleeing girl, burnt and terrified, captured the horror of the Vietnam War in 1972. There could not have been a more moving image of the suffering of the innocent in a war in which atrocity became a daily routine.

The picture went around the world and hardened opposition to the war. It stirred compassion and anger among newspaper readers - and increased pressure on governments to work to end the war. It achieved an emotional response that was beyond the power of words...

In newspaper offices throughout the free world editors had to weigh such considerations in arriving at decisions on whether to publish the picture.

Today newspaper editors and their delegates have to make similar judgments every day in selecting the articles and pictures to be published. If an editor is doing the job properly, he or she is guided by the public interest and an understanding of what is interesting, useful and acceptable to the readership.

No editor is infallible. Errors are made and decisions sometimes are as controversial inside newspaper offices as among readers.

While newspapers remain largely a verbal medium, the power of images to convey news has always mandated their frequent use. But, as technology has improved, the speed with which news pictures can reach the readership has increased exponentially. And, as newspapers have increasingly converted to color production, the clarity and immediacy, not to mention the reality, of the images has caused concern among a number of readers. And an increasing number of complaints to the Council.

Those complaints generally cite either (or both) of the principle on the privacy and sensibilities of individuals or that on taste. Those principles are:

3. Readers of publications are entitled to have news and comment presented to them honestly and fairly, and with respect for the privacy and sensibilities of individuals. However, the right to privacy should not prevent publication of matters of public record or obvious or significant public interest. Rumour and unconfirmed reports, if published at all, should be identified as such.

6. A publication has a wide discretion in matters of taste, but this does not justify lapses of taste so repugnant as to be extremely offensive to its readership.

It is interesting to note that, while there has been a number of complaints in the last year about confronting images, including those arising from 11 September 2001, Pym Fortuyn's murder and 12 October 2002, no complaint concerned solely with a 'graphic' image has proceeded to adjudication by the Council. In fact, many newspapers are aware of their readers' concerns and have addressed them either by using distressing photos inside the newspaper (rather than on the front page), using monochrome (instead of color) or by explaining why they decided to publish a particular image. The Australian decided to publish a color, front page picture of Pym Fortuyn's body and, as a result there were a number of calls to both the newspaper and the Council. However, on the following day, the paper published a prominent page two editor's note in which it explained to its readers the reasons for its choice. There were no further calls to the Council about the image and those who had registered their concern did not proceed with their complaints.

In a February 2001 APC News article about an American Professor, Michael Berlin, who travelled across the US in search of The Road to Accountability, it was noted that one of the ways by which the American press was trying to increase its credibility and accountability was the publication of explanations for their actions in controversial matters. Prof. Berlin's basic assumptions included that "news organizations must become more accountable to their audiences. They must find better ways to listen, not just to report, but to grasp what it is that the public wants from them, and to explain to the readers how and why they do what they do, even if what they do grates on some customers. It's no longer enough to listen to sources and then just talk to the public; there must be a dialogue with the audience as well."

Michael Stutchbury, the editor of The Australian, addressed the Council on matters of taste, noting in particular the number of recent stories that involved images that would be confronting and, perhaps, offensive. He argued that it was incumbent on newspapers, as the 'first draft of history' accurately to reflect the real world for its readers. Sometimes this required the publication of confronting images which the newspaper realised will offend some readers. "The question of taste is a subsidiary issue when deciding which photos to publish. Photographs reflect the full gamut of what's happening - from good to evil," he argued. He also noted the importance of credibility, established by the newspaper's interaction with its readers, through the publication of their letters or though the publication of editorial notes, such as the one published by The Australian after the Pym Fortuyn image. He noted that newspapers frequently had many more images than they could use and frequently rejected images that were too confronting. He demonstrated this by the use of a number of images from the 12 October Bali bombing that the newspaper had not used.

So what has the Council said about the publication of confronting images, particularly on the front-pages of major newspapers. Perhaps it is best summed up in Adjudication No 596 dealing with the front-page image of a dead child, one of seven members of two related families who were washed from the rocks by a freak wave and drowned.

The use of photographs of persons involved in accidents, tragedies, and other occasions of private grief, particularly where the suffering of those most immediately concerned will be exacerbated by the publication, should not be undertaken lightly. There should be a compelling and over-riding public interest in their publication.

A consideration for newspapers must be the likelihood of persons close to those identified in photographs involving tragedy and grief actually seeing the publication. The greater the likelihood, the weightier the public interest must be before a decision to publish is taken.

Thus, the publication of scenes from wars and tragedies in other lands identifying individuals is more acceptable. The use of photographs of atrocities in wartime, or the horrors of famine can raise legitimate issues of local concern, for example, whether we should be involved in assistance or in some intervention, if only diplomatic.

It expressed the same idea somewhat differently in Adjudication No. 1002, arising from the publication in The Age, Melbourne, of the picture of a dead policeman in a pool of his own blood, an image taken in long-shot from a helicopter:

Complaints about the publication of pictures of dead bodies present the Council with difficulties. The Council has adopted a general approach that there is a difference between photographs of the unidentified victims of foreign carnage and a front-page picture of a body in a local community where the victim is well known. Its principles do not place an absolute ban on the use that can be made of such pictures. It is a matter of balancing the use that can be made of a picture that might be considered offensive against the public interest in having the matter brought to attention.

Dead Bodies

In 2001, the Cairns Post published of a front-page picture of two bodies sprawled, one in a doorway of, and the other outside, an Atherton Tableland farmhouse, the result of a double shooting. In Adjudication No. 1119, the Council upheld complaints which referred to the 'ghoulish portrayal of a tragedy' and the 'sickening visual image', of the possibility of many in Ravenshoe and Cairns knowing and being able to identify the victims, and of the paper's poor taste. The paper argued that

In tragic situations such as this, the media has a responsibility to the public to present the news in the most effective way possible. In doing so, of course, we run the risk of as easily being accused of self-censorship as of sensationalism.

While noting that in this case as in other cases that "the balance is a fine one", the Council noted that Ravenshoe is a small town, with many isolated farmhouses around it, and the community is described as close-knit. Judging by readers' letters the community's standards, if not the paper's, were breached. For that reason it upheld the complaint.

Adjudication No. 1072 (February 2000) dealt with several complaints against The West Australian for its publication on page one, in color, of an aerial photograph of the half-naked body of a dead woman. The newspaper said it was thought to be a news picture of significant interest, especially given there were 13 unsolved murders in WA, the Claremont serial killer was still on the loose and just 10 days earlier another young woman was killed. Only on the next day did it become apparent that the woman involved was the alleged victim of domestic violence and possibly not connected to the other killings. The complainants objected to the image on two main grounds, that it was an invasion of the dead woman (and her relatives' and friends') right to privacy, and that it was in bad taste. The Council found no breach of its principles on taste but upheld the complaints on the grounds of an unnecessary invasion of the privacy and dignity of the victim. This was based on the dominance of the photograph in the page one layout, and that it was not only in color but showed the dead woman was naked from the waist up and was lying on her back. It thought that the story was dramatic enough: the text and a more suitable image would have sufficiently emphasised public concerns. There was no over-riding public interest to justify its publication.

In an earlier matter, also involving an aerial photograph of dead body on the front-page of a metropolitan newspaper, the Council dismissed the complaints by a 9 to 8 vote. This is the 1998 case in The Age referred to above (Adjudication No. 1002). The Victorian Chief Commissioner of Police, the Police Association and several members of the public complained about the publication of the photograph. Again, the Council saw the issue as finely balanced: "It was an horrific crime and its enormity is graphically reinforced by the picture. On the other hand the color photograph used displays the dead man's blood loss in a manner that could not help but distress those who were close to the deceased. The Council believes that The Age's decision to publish was in the public interest and therefore did not breach its principles."

A contributing factor in this case was that the body was far less identifiable than those in the Cairns Post and The West Australian and, because it involved the death of a policeman, the public interest in the publication of the image was stronger.

Another case in 1998 concerned The Australian Magazine's publication of a photograph of a body at the scene of a 'murder-suicide', taken by the police at the scene of her death. It was reproduced in conjunction with an article questioning the official finding that she had committed suicide after murdering a friend. In Adjudication No. 969, the Council noted that the photograph was very 'graphic' and many readers might find it unpleasant to look at. The fact that The Australian Magazine has a general readership makes it desirable to demonstrate a degree of sensitivity in regard to the matters that it publishes. However, in this case the thrust of the article's argument (that the woman in question was also murdered and not a murder-suicide) was seen by the Council as considerably strengthened by the inclusion of the photograph. For this reason the Council considered that the magazine was justified in including it with the article.

Foreign carnage

The 1996 publication on the front page of The Sydney Morning Herald of a large color photograph of a Tel Aviv street following a terrorist bomb attack which left 14 dead was the subject of Adjudication No 852. One complainant wrote that he was shocked and affronted. Another said that the extremely graphic photo crossed the border of decency and taste, clearly showing the mutilated, burnt and bloodied body of one of the victims. While agreeing that the photograph was disturbing, the Council found that such a graphic photograph of a major incident of terrorism was justified by the context in which it was presented and, therefore, did not breach the Council's principles on taste. One wonders what the Council would say were the street in Sydney or Melbourne? Or Kuta Beach?

In Adjudication No. 595 (September 1992), the Press Council dismissed complaints against The Bulletin over a front-cover picture (used as an illustration to an article on 'Revenge') that showed a young Karen guerilla in the act of stabbing to death a captive tied to a tree in the Burmese jungle. The picture was undoubtedly offensive to many people but its publication was not, in the Press Council's view, extremely so, neither was it so repugnant as to bring the freedom of the press into disrepute. The picture was undoubtedly horrifying, but the Council believed it did reflect the violence, murder and mayhem being inflicted on the world from Burma to Bosnia. Hatred and revenge were part of that pattern. The Council was not persuaded that the use of the cover picture and those inside was unjustified as illustrations for an article which ranged from the extremes of revenge to the banal of neighbourly differences. It did not see the choice of pictures as racist.

These rulings on images of 'foreign carnage' do not provide carte blanche for newspapers. The images still need to be of relevance to the readership of the publication. In 1996, in Adjudication No. 859, the Council upheld a complaint against the Border Mail, Albury, after the publication of a picture which showed a man stabbing an alleged thief during a riot in Haiti. The Council saw the photograph as being at the upper end of graphic illustrations of violence and likely to offend many readers. Because the news report was not sufficiently important to warrant the use of such a 'graphic' photograph, its use was gratuitous and breached the bounds of good taste.

Re-enactment

Adjudication No. 1153 in January this year, ruled on another clear breach of the Council's principle on taste. It was such an egregious breach that the Council "unreservedly and unanimously condemned" The Sunday Mail, Adelaide. The material included a series of articles and pictures which described a 1994 murder by drowning of a woman, and a recent attempt by a group of South Australian academics, senior lawyers and scientists to re-create and film it. In the Council's view, publication of the material was a serious lapse of editorial judgment and should never have occurred in the first place. In its judgment, the Press Council urged Australian newspapers to reject the kind of gratuitous portrayal of violence, compounded by failure to consider the sensitivities of relatives, that generated these complaints.

Motor vehicles

Murders and foreign carnage give rise to some front-page color photos but so too do more domestic tragedies, including car accidents and drownings. These events are more likely to be reported smaller community newspapers and give rise to additional concerns in reporting.

The Collie Mail is a community newspaper in Western Australia which featured a photograph of a wrecked motor vehicle and subsequent stories about an accident in which a 21-year-old died. His parents complained about the publication of the photo. In Adjudication No. 1094 (August 2000) the Council said that it was conscious of the considerable grief experienced by the family and friends of the dead man. However, it noted that, in covering the tragic event the newspaper balanced its responsibility to respect the privacy and sensibilities of individuals with its duty to present news to its community in an honest and fair way. On balance, the Council dismissed the complaint because it did not believe that the paper breached either of the principles which relate to respect for privacy and lapse in taste.

It reached a different conclusion in Adjudication No 926 (May 1997) by a 9 to 8 majority. This time the paper was The South Gippsland Sentinel Times in Victoria which published a front page photograph of a road accident. The photograph showed a body in the passenger seat of a car, under a blood-stained white sheet, with a leg protruding from under the covering. The caption itself did not name the victim. It reported: "A man died in the two-car collision, while four others were seriously injured." However, a story on page two identified him.

The Council said:

Pictures of dead bodies always present the media, and indeed the Press Council, with difficult decisions. In recent times, the images of corpses from war zones, terrorist bombings, and famine areas have become all too familiar to newspaper readers and television viewers. ...

It can understand the family's distress at seeing the body of their husband and father so prominently featured, whether or not the intention of the paper was to provide a salutary warning to other drivers. It does not accept the defence of the paper that the picture was not as graphic as those used in television advertisements because in the ads the 'bodies' are played by actors, nor the counter-claim by the editor that many readers 'did not notice the body at all'.

It upheld the complaint on the grounds that the newspaper failed to respect the privacy and sensibilities of the family.

Similarly in Adjudication No. 769 in 1994, The Advertiser, Adelaide, published a picture of a woman whose car had, minutes before the picture was taken, hit five pedestrians, one of whom subsequently died. The Council held that publication of the photo, a single-column head-shot which would have clearly identified the grief-stricken woman to anyone knowing her, was a violation of her privacy. The Council found that there was no compelling justification, in the public interest, for The Advertiser's serious encroachment on the subject's privacy.

Drownings

On occasions there may be a public interest 'defence' for the publication of images of tragic deaths. In 2000, the Council dismissed complaints against The Sunday Tasmanian's use of a color photograph showing bodies of drowned fishermen because it believed that this was a case where the public interest outweighed the right to privacy of the dead people, their relatives and friends (Adjudication No. 1071). In its correspondence, the paper pointed out that boating accidents in Tasmania had claimed many lives and were a matter of great public concern. The paper said that it and its daily partner, The Mercury, had long campaigned for people in small boats to wear lifejackets. The papers continued to do so. The Council's principles recognise that issues of privacy should not constrain publication of matters of significant public interest. The Council argued that, in the light of the public interest, publication of the image was justified.

A similar conclusion was reached in Adjudication No. 596 (September 1992), after The Sunday Mail, Adelaide, published a large photograph of a dead child, one of seven members of two related families who were washed from the rocks by a freak wave and drowned at Kiama on the NSW coast. After noting its concerns with the publication of such photos, as quoted above, the Council did not uphold the complaint because of the newspaper's distance from the scene of the tragedy and because there was a legitimate reason for dramatising the Kiama tragedy, in that similar ocean swells sometimes occur at popular South Australian coastal resorts. (The newspaper subsequently published a map identifying such danger spots.) There was, as a result, a strong public interest in the story, which outweighed the impact on the sensibilities of the public at large.

Manipulation of images

Changes in newspaper technology mean that it is now easier to manipulate the images used in newspapers, either by enhancement, by cropping or by other means. Arising from such concerns, partly from the publication of some images of Port Arthur murderer, Martin Bryant, the Council issued a guideline statement in June 1998. It said:

The Council believes that a publication that uses a significantly altered picture that purports to illustrate the news (whether it be on the cover or in the body of the publication) should disclose in the picture caption or in a prominent position the fact of that alteration. The form of the disclosure can be left to the editor of the publication to determine but it should be sufficient to bring the fact of the alteration to the notice of readers. If this is done properly, the Council would not normally entertain a complaint about the alteration.

The Council believes a notation ... which accurately describes the significant alteration of a picture or the creation of a montage of different images would normally be sufficient for a newspaper to meet its ethical requirements.

In August 1999, the Council upheld one of a number of complaints made by an MP against the South Gippsland Sentinel-Times after it removed his image from a picture of a flag presentation ceremony because such a removal, without acknowledgment, breached the guideline and meant that the newspaper treated its readers unfairly (Adjudication No 1048). But, in Adjudication 1011, in January 1999, a complaint against The Daily Telegraph over publication of a computer generated image portraying TV personality Jana Wendt as a TV barrel girl was dismissed. It carried an attribution to the artist responsible for the image in small type together with the legend "Computer image". In this case, the image did not breach the Press Council principle regarding taste and was not regarded as misleading. The style of the image was such that an editor could reasonably expect a reader to recognise it for what it was.

Taste and Privacy

The publication of photographs unrelated to wars, crimes and tragedies can still give rise to concerns either with breaches of taste or of privacy. In Adjudication No. 968 (May 1998), the Council upheld a complaint about a photograph, published in the Townsville Bulletin, showing a woman performer's face contorting as air was sucked from a plastic bag she was wearing over her head. It was one of a number illustrating a story about a performance of a circus. The Council noted a statement in its principles that "freedom of the press carries with it an equivalent responsibility to the public". The complainant argued that, as the photograph might have encouraged children to perform a similar act, with possibly fatal consequences, it should not have been published. The Council agreed that the publication was, in the circumstances, irresponsible.

On questions of privacy, there was an article about the general issues as discussed by the Council in the May 1998 APC News. It is apposite, however, to note a couple of rulings about pictures. In Adjudication No. 916, arising from images in The Daily Telegraph, Sydney, of sneak photographs of Senator Bob Woods and his wife Jane in private discussion in the backyard of their home, the Council said that publication of the photographs was a blatant example of a breach of privacy. It went on:

But was publication justified by public interest?

The Telegraph claimed it was, in its written response to the Press Council. Its assistant editor set out that there was no trespass involved, so the pictures were legal. As to the public interest, Senator Woods was a public figure involved in issues of legitimate interest to the public, who after all paid his salary, and his wife was involved in the issues being aired before the public.

Essentially, the defence extended the public's right to know to a right to publish the sneak photographs.

The Press Council does not accept this argument. It regards publication of the pictures as a breach of its principle relating to "respect for the privacy and sensibilities of individuals" and sees no compelling public interest in the obtaining and publication of pictures of this kind.

On the other hand, in Adjudication No 910, also in 1997, which partly upheld complaints against The Daily Telegraph after it published a class photo of Year 12 students at Mt Druitt High School under the heading Class we failed, dismissed (by 9 votes to 8) those aspects of the complaints dealing with the publication of the image. It said that the photograph was in the public domain and the newspaper had a right to use it. The Council's principles hold that the respect for the privacy and sensibilities of individuals should not prevent publication of matters of public record or obvious or significant public interest.

In a much earlier ruling in November 1981 the Council dismissed complaints of a breach of privacy of a woman depicted naked in a photograph on the front page of The West Australian. The woman was among victims of a Sydney fire. The photo showed her being helped down a ladder by a fireman. The Council noted the distance between the events depicted and the publication of the photo and considered that, in the absence of any evidence that the woman, herself, felt her privacy had been breached, it was unable to uphold the complaint. It also felt that the photograph's news value in depicting a dramatic rescue outweighed any suggestions of sexism (Adjudication No. 118).

Generally, however, when children are involved, the bar is set higher. In Adjudication No. 518 (September 1991), the Council upheld a complaint against The Advertiser, Adelaide, that publication of a photograph of a boy, who was pictured after the murder of his mother and suicide of the woman's de facto husband, had breached the boy's privacy. The adjudication says:

The paper defends publication, saying the name of the murdered woman was not published in the story accompanying the photograph; nor was the name of the dead man. The photograph of the son showed him leaning against a wall with his face totally concealed; there was no way he could have been identified by it, or by the story. The picture, says the paper, was taken in a public place.

It further says the photographer was taking pictures when the boy asked what he was doing. He said he was from The Advertiser. The boy asked him to leave, which he did. In the Press Council's view, this request should have been a sufficient indication that the boy did not want any exposure in the paper, and should have prompted a greater respect for his obvious grief.

The Press Council accepts that the story was of genuine public interest, but believes that its fair reporting did not require such an intrusion into privacy.

Jack R Herman

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