It’s about when photos published
Tone-deaf response to backlash concerning coverage of death unnecessary insult
Re: “Disturbing photos part of news,” by Rick MacLean.
I like to keep track of the news back home on P.E.I. I don’t enjoy all of the news from home, and I was saddened to hear of a tragic car accident that took the life of Chelcie McGregor in early March. I didn’t know Chelcie personally, but we had mutual friends, and it feels like everyone in a small town knows each other, even if indirectly.
The town of Souris (where Chelcie was from) was outraged that photos of the accident were posted on public platforms by The Guardian a mere few hours after her death. Chelcie’s death was horrible, and The Guardian’s tone-deaf response to the backlash concerning their coverage of her death was an unnecessary insult on top of a tragic situation.
Rick MacLean, Guardian contributor and instructor at Holland College, wrote a particularly condescending piece where he explains the necessity of publishing graphic photos as part of the news. In his article, MacLean reflects back on a similar time where he decided to publish graphic photos from a murder. It’s clear that the events he talks about happened before the invention of the Internet, and he said that the photos ran in the paper with no backlash. He said such criticisms about posting graphic photos are easy pickings for “armchair experts” (i.e. a mourning community), and how — I’m paraphrasing here — everyone needs to suck it up and get over the reality of reporting the news.
MacLean fails to recognize that in the story he recounts, he published the images of the crime scene much later after the crime, not a mere few hours. From what I gather in his story, the murder happened in the morning, the journalist covering the murder came back with photos by 2 p.m., and the images went to print by 3 p.m. I’m assuming this was the next day’s paper, but perhaps it was an evening addition.
In any case, the published photos wouldn’t be available until the evening after the murder, allowing time for printing and delivery. He literally writes in his own article what he fails to recognize in the backlash about the coverage of the recent accident: it was when the images were published, not if the images were published, that upset everyone.
No one is upset that graphic images are part of the news. We understand that, and we don’t require patronizing opinion pieces to tell us so. People were angry because said graphic images were published so soon after the accident before all family members could be realistically contacted. It’s 2018, and the standards that apply to print media need to be updated for our instant, digital world.