Saturday, September 5, 2009

Publish or Not

Read this post by David W. Dunlap on the NYT Lens blog. We should discuss this in class.

2 comments:

  1. When publishing images of fallen soliders or of any war casualties I think it is important to remember who will be seeing the photo and what that image has the potential to do to them. In particular I am most concerned with the soldiers family and friends. We know that photographs can actually cause people to suffer Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. This happened when photographs of people jumping from the towers on 9/11 were published. If we know that we could seriously hurt someone with a photograph what makes it worth that risk? Yes, people should know the realities of the war that their tax dollars are funding, but is it right to publish those potentially harmful photographs on the front page of the NY Times? Most of us wouldn’t throw rocks at people because we know that it would hurt them. Why then, can we justify printing potentially hurtful image on the front page of a widely circulated newspaper?

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