Sunday, August 23, 2009
From the Newsroom: A responsibility to depict life -- as it happens
From the newsroom
Michael Stowe, managing editor
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From the Newsroom blog
"How stupid can the Times be," read the subject line of the e-mail.
It captured the intensity of the reader's complaint about a feature photo we published showing a 13-year-old Roanoke boy jumping off a second-story stairway onto a trampoline.
"Why on earth would your newspaper put something out there that exhibits such dangerous behavior," the reader wrote. "Your paper should be promoting safety as much as possible, not encouraging foolish, dangerous behavior that can cause serious injury or worse."
Jumping onto a trampoline from one story up is a recipe for a trip the emergency room. I wouldn't want either of my daughters trying it.
However, the decision on whether we acted irresponsibly in publishing the photo isn't clear-cut. Here's a bit of background on the image that ran in the Virginia section on Saturday, Aug. 15.
Photographer Kyle Green was driving home one evening when he spotted the friends goofing off while jumping on the trampoline in their 13th Street Southwest neighborhood.
"I thought it would make a nice feature photo, kids having fun in the summertime heat," he said last week.
As Green captured the scene, some of the kids climbed the steps to the landing between the first and second stories of the house. One-by-one, they leaped to the trampoline below.
No one was hurt and Green told me later it seemed like it wasn't the first time they had jumped from the stairway.
"I wouldn't have photographed a situation where I thought the kids were putting themselves in mortal danger," Green said.
The Roanoke Times | File August
This photo of a Roanoke youngster jumping from a second-story stairway onto a trampoline drew a complaint earlier this month.
We only received this one complaint about the photo. But the e-mail critic raises an issue we deal with a few times each year.
We've gotten complaints in the past when we have published photos of a child riding a bike without a helmet, a pregnant mother smoking, a teenager jumping off a bridge into the Cowpasture River or a man mowing the lawn while carrying a child.
A few readers criticized us last month for running a front page photo of people jumping off the rock embankment known as the Cliffs into Smith Mountain Lake. The story with the photo explained how public safety officials were cracking down on what had become a popular summer activity. Anyone caught jumping off the Cliffs could be ticketed, with potential penalties of up to a $2,500 fine and a year in jail.
We had several newsroom discussions about whether to publish the Cliffs photos, which featured people breaking the law (though you couldn't identify anyone) not just engaging in a dangerous activity. The news value of the story -- and the fact that the photos helped show the reader that this was a common problem -- guided our decision not to just run the photo but to feature it on the front page.
The trampoline photo was different. There was little traditional news value to the image. Our editors recognized that many people would find such behavior dangerous, but there was little discussion about the image before it was published on Page 9 of the news section.
I wasn't involved in the decision to publish the photo -- and I wish there had been a wider conversation about it -- but after talking with editors and photographers for this column, I've concluded that I would have signed off on running it.
It's a compelling image that captures the joy and frivolity of the scene. It also features a moment of everyday life that's sometimes missing amid the institutional-oriented coverage in our pages.
As editors, we have a responsibility in selecting and editing the photos we publish. There isn't one rule to guide us. Most ethical decisions in journalism are situational and should be made only after thoughtful discussion.
Sometimes that means not running photos -- whether it's because they are too gruesome or offensive or because they portray a subject unfairly. Many times, though, we need to step aside and show life in our community, imperfections and all, as it happens.
What's your take? Are we irresponsible when we run images showing people engaging in dangerous or even illegal activities? How should the news value of photos influence our decisions? Drop me an e-mail or post your comment on our From the Newsroom blog.
