Should the media have shown the images of the Woolwich attacker? For me the simple answer is ‘yes’, but that each of these cases must be put in context and each publication framed in a way to minimise risk.
I don’t believe in an absolute right or obligation to publish everything. I know that newsrooms saw imagery from Woolwich that they did not put on screen or in their pages. Imagery that is full of gore may be a realistic portrayal of an appalling act but showing it all can actually stop people from watching and distance them from the act itself.
It’s also not good enough to say that these images would be published online anyway, though that is certainly true. The video and photographs of the immediate aftermath were taken by citizens and some were broadcast on social networks as well as offered to the news media. But journalists still have to reflect on their ethical, social and political responsibilities before using them.
When I asked this question on Twitter [@CharlieBeckett] I got a range of replies.
Journalists tended to say that the public should see tough images of what was a shocking event:
Some pointed out that once an image is published on one platform other media will follow:
It was also pointed out that it’s the words that go with the pictures that can make the impact better or worse:
While others said that broadcasting the attacker’s message was wrong:
While others worried about the impact on the relatives involved and on the wider population:
My view is that you can’t understand what happened without hearing and seeing both the attacker, the banal location, and the upset witnesses. That image and that voice is the essence of the horror. Of course, warnings and caveats are needed. Care must be taken with the use of descriptors such as ‘Muslim’ or the word ‘terrorist’ or ‘terror’. I agree with the BBC’s Mark Urban that it is a technical rather than moral term. This was a terror attack, but a white person killing an elderly asian man a few weeks ago was not – it was racist.
On the ‘oxygen of publicity’ question I can’t see how news can continue if we worry too much about inspiring support or imitation of ghastly acts like this. But it is important to show the context. That is why we need to hear reaction from the eye-witnesses and others in the various communities who are affected. Sometimes those reactions can feel pious or cliched, but it is important to say the obvious and even sententious sometimes. In that sense, David Cameron’s response has been exemplary.
You can listen to a debate between Sir Peter Fahey from Greater Manchester Police and myself on BBC Radio 4 World at One here
[There’s a good alternative view here from Sunder Katawala who says the media has given the terrorists a ‘megaphone’ but I think that is a simplistic view of how people react to the messages and their ability to contextualise. Though I agree that it’s up to the media, politicians and so-called community leaders to articulate the alternative to the terrorists.
Less surprisingly, media prof and former tabloid editor Roy Greenslade agrees that the images should have been published]
AL Jazeera English made an interesting film about the coverage including a discussion of whether it was correct to describe as ‘terror’
I disagree with you entirely. Still pictures were acceptable – they conveyed an impression of the horror of what happened. But ITV and the BBC were wrong to screen the video – because it was simply giving a platform to a murderer who still had blood on his hands. Would we have screened something similar from Peter Sutcliffe? Of course not. Just because these people claimed to have a political agenda did not make it acceptable to screen their manifesto nationwide. It is no curb on free speech to say we will not show the rantings of a psychopath. We allowed our media to become the instrument of killers. That cannot be right.
I too think it was wrong to broadcast these images – the attacker wanted the world to bear witness to his act. Indeed – his message is as much a part of the attack as the physical assault itself.
This isn’t about denying an extremist a platform but about stopping a criminal from completing his crime as he intended.
I think you can understand everything about this attack without seeing pictures. Think about how reporting used to work, and how history works. We don’t always have images, but we have accounts. I see one argument for publication, which is to show that the attackers were not a sophisticated organization, nor were they mythical monsters. They were just men, who had made a very bad decision.
I utterly disagree with the argument that once one media organization uses the pictures, others are editorially or competitively bound to follow. Someone can still make a good decision farther on and be clear about why they’ve made it. But then I come from a family who first heard of the murder of one of us from the media, so maybe I’m too soft. Or maybe soft is what we need in the face of such brutality.