He didn't know the 16-year-old was dead, apparently from police gunfire, after this young man and his father allegedly killed two police officers earlier in the day. Two other cops were wounded in this shoot-out.
Death toll--four. Wounded--who knows how many?
This picture is from Friday's front page of the Memphis CA. I clipped it from their website and then discovered it was in the "top ten" for the Newseum's Front Page gallery.
Full disclosure. The Commercial Appeal is a Scripps paper and I work for Scripps. And as you probably know, I spent nearly nine years in Memphis at WMC-TV (formerly a Scripps TV station).
Here the CA's editorial boss explaining his decision to publish the photo.
And there's more. Here's a report from WMC after the shooting about video they captured before the photo was taken.
My thoughts: Sometimes news is ugly. Sad. Horrible. It is our job to report the facts, as best we can, without bias, without judgement. I don't know how this teenager and his dad got into so much trouble. I don't know why they apparently shot police officers. I'm sad for my friends in Memphis who are in law enforcement (and for the ones who have to report on it) because it seems like my former home town has had its share of senseless violence.
Four men died in the Mid-South yesterday. One was just a kid. It's the job of news gatherers in that community to do the best they can to discover the truth and report it.
The Commercial Appeal reporters and photographer did their job. I salute their courage in publishing this photograph.
4 comments:
I agree this is newsworthy and appropriate to show. Then again, take that with a grain of salt, remembering I'm the guy who's always having to ask if something's in bad taste or not.
My gut reaction tends toward thinking it was in poor taste. I am a member of a website which is notorious for being in poor taste, and if I had posted that image, I would have been banned for it. That Fark.com has a higher ethical standard than the Commercial Appeal does not speak well of the newspaper.
Would we be claiming news value if it was a photograph of Officer Paudert's body lying prostrate in the grass? If I recall correctly, the CA editorialized against Thaddeus Matthews when he did exactly the same thing on his blog.
Also, what does it mean that it was a still photograph? WMC ran raw video of the capture, which included footage of the corpse being pulled from the car. Somehow, that doesn't seem as offensive as the CA's front page. Am I biased toward moving pictures?
The photographer certainly did their job. The photograph unquestionably has news value. But does it belong on the front page? Personally, if I had linked to the picture on my own blog, I would have given my readers some kind of warning about what they were about to see. In context, it seems almost pornographic.
The commercial appeal won't even publish the name of juveniles who are accused of crimes, but they'll publish a picture on the front page that shows the face of one who's died in a hale of bullets?
Remember: this kid is just ACCUSED of being involved in the police shooting; he's innocent until he's proven guilty, and until then, the media should respect that fact.
This is SICK, and shows just how debased news reporting has become, especially in a city that is obsessed (thanks to its media) with anything that has anything to do with crime. Shame on the CA for pandering to the city's lowest common denominator.
Remember: this kid is just ACCUSED of being involved in the police shooting; he's innocent until he's proven guilty...
Last I looked, though, we don't try corpses killed in the act of apprehension. So I guess we'll never know if he's innocent.
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