My Globe and Mail colleague Ian Brown has an interesting story today about the ethical challenges faced by broadcasters and newspaper editors earlier this week over coverage of the murder and desecration of four Americans in Iraq. Many networks refused to show the footage of cheering crowds burning and mutilating the bodies. Some networks waited until after prime-time. Newspaper front pages the next day took a variety of approaches. Here's an excerpt from Brown's story:
“Concerns … gripped a late-afternoon meeting of Globe and Mail editors. Where normally three editors decide what picture will grace the front of the next day's Globe, this time 11 were involved, four of whom were women. Only one, deputy national editor Catherine Wallace, was in favour of using the most graphic of the pictures, a headless, armless, legless, charcoaled torso. “It was because I think that sometimes things are so barbarous that you should show how barbarous they are,” Ms. Wallace explained.
But The Globe's editors decided against the picture, based on three considerations: “the Cheerios factor” (not wanting to sicken breakfast readers), how much blood was shown (especially important in a colour picture), and how best to tell the story. “We were trying to find a balance between covering the story and not wanting to assault our readers,” editor Edward Greenspon added. “Your concern in these things is always, 'How do I best serve my readers?'””
If you can get a copy of the paper today, Brown's article is on A12 with thumbnail-sized colour reproductions of several of the front pages he refers to in his article.