Was Photo of Dead Ambassador Acceptable? [
Times]
Asks the ombud, who concludes: It's a tough call. After all, he isn't a brown person, and some readers are still suffering the vapors from seeing that picture taken outside the Empire State Building.
Quote:
Ian Fisher, the associate managing editor who runs The Times’s Web site during the day, said the decision was a carefully considered one by the paper’s top editors who met in the morning to discuss it.
They chose to use the Agence France-Presse photograph in question, he said, because of its journalistic significance.
“It’s horrifying but there is a journalistic imperative,” he said. “It’s news.”
It’s notable that the caption stopped short of saying it was a photo of Mr. Stevens’s dead body. The caption reads, “A man, reportedly unconscious, identified as Mr. Stevens.”
Mr. Fisher added: “We don’t hesitate to run pictures of Iraqis, Syrians and Qaddafi dead. We’ve been at war for years. We’ve shown a lot of bodies.”
But he realized why the reaction was so fast and harsh to this photograph.
“I can understand why people feel it’s more disturbing to see a photo of an American, particularly an American diplomat,” he said.
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