Chapter 8 in Media Ethics Issues and Cases poses an ethical dilemma in journalism that seems to trigger drastically different emotions and opinions from the class. Whether or not to capture through photography the event in which the journalist is witnessing is a quite pressing issue. The Chapter 8 cases expose graphic photos along with a background story as to why they were published.
Case 8-E “Horror in Soweto” told the story of “photographer Gregory Marinovich documenting the killing, by a mob of African National Congress supporters, of a man they believed to be a Zulu spy” (Media Ethics 229). The man was being walked from the Soweto, South Africa train station by men armed in life threatening weapons. Marinovich witnessed the man being “stoned, bludgeoned, stabbed, doused with gasoline and set on fire” (Media Ethics 229). The two photos Marinovich captured included the man lying on his back while being stabbed in the head and the second showed the man submerged in flames.
Editors were confused as to why Marinovich failed to stop the horrible acts being performed by the African mob. In response to this, an advisory was issued on the photo stating that Marinovich was ordered by the mob to stop taking photos and he informed the mob he would only stop when they stopped torturing the man. Was this ethically sound?
To me, yes Marinovich should have tried to stop the mob, but I’m not a reporter. In Marinovich’s defense, readers “need to be brought face-to-face with parts of reality that they would like to deny” (“Indiana University”). The two photos were run by several different newspapers; however each decided to package the photos differently. Some chose the stabbing photo in running it in color, while others like the Rocky Mountain News ran the three photos from the incident with a warning box to all readers.
Which ever way a newspaper chooses to run shocking and graphic photos is ultimately up to them. The reporter did their job in documenting the truth. My stance on this subject brings me to one final quote from Case 8-E regarding the “breakfast test”. When applying a graphic photo to the breakfast test, “many editors who rejected the more brutal pictures said the “breakfast test” is irrelevant” (Media Ethics 230). Jeff Jarvis, Sunday editor at the New York Daily News states, ‘If you’re putting out a paper in New York and don’t have something that’s going to cause some discomfort over breakfast, then you’re probably not putting out the full paper you should’ (Media Ethics 230-231).
