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Can we handle the unpixelated truth?

Simon Crerar

by Simon Crerar

25 Oct 05:55am

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Filed under: Journalism, Media, Photography, Society, Syria, War

66 comments

Every morning I start my working day scanning the Getty Images, AP and AFP wires, searching hundreds of images from around the world for striking visual stories to share with Australia. Every morning I am reduced to tears by the latest photos from Syria’s bloody civil war.

Do you really want to see this picture? Original picture: AP

Most days, these show blood, guts and severely traumatised children amid the most appalling scenes of death and destruction. No one wants corpses with their Corn Flakes, so we do not publish these images.

As a rule, Australian newspapers do not publish photographs of dead bodies.

Such images are guaranteed to upset and we run the danger of turning readers away from our coverage.

On a typical day, I am much more likely to write about amazing art, beautiful nature or humans doing wonderful things than horrible subjects such as death, destruction and disaster.

Yet death, destruction and disaster are daily occurrences around the world, and Syria is seeing all three on a daily basis.

More than 25,000 Syrians have lost their lives in the 19-month conflict, and 300,000 refugees have fled to nearby countries.

There’s a horrific war going on. And you’re not seeing the worst of it. If you were, would you care more?

Last week, one of the most popular posts on the user generated social network Reddit discussed a particularly tragic photograph from Syria showing a father cradling his dead son in Aleppo after suicide bombers in a government-controlled area of the city killed at least 34 people.

More than 2000 comments discussed the powerful picture, which as well as capturing one man’s agony, also opened up a fiery debate about a war where even the supposed “good guys” are capable of horribly murderous acts.

Now I’m a cheerful, happy guy by nature and thus gravitate, like most readers, to cheerful, happy pictures wherever possible.

But like most journalists, part of my motivation for entering the profession was a desire to somehow “make a difference”.

I see horrible photographs from Syria every day. Google “war in Syria” and you can see some pretty gruesome stuff too.

Should the media be sanitising this war? And if we shared Syria’s true horrors, would it make any difference?

Simon Crerar is News Limited’s Visual Story Editor. Follow him at twitter.com/simoncrerar

Comments on this post will close at 8pm AEST.

Most commented

66 comments

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    • nihonin says:

      05:51am | 25/10/12

      If you’ve seen roadkill, dead animal, dead human, pretty much all the same.  Only real difference is, we’re more morbid and fascinated when a human is killed.

      Reply

    • Barry says:

      07:20am | 25/10/12

      You haven’t seen anything until you’ve watched Islamic extremists hacking through the necks of converts with blunt blades.

    • nihonin says:

      07:48am | 25/10/12

      True Barry, thanks to the internet we can view that as well, helps to feed our collective morbid tendencies.

    • James1 says:

      09:11am | 25/10/12

      Personally, the images I find most disturbing are those that emerged from the Holocaust.  One in particular has always stuck with me: footage of a line of (presumably Jewish) men and women standing on the edge of a ditch somewhere in Russia, calmly waiting for a line of Germans to shoot them down.  Why do they just stand there?  How could they be so calm?

      That footage haunts me to this day.

    • nihonin says:

      09:40am | 25/10/12

      James1, I remember seeing a documentary way back in the 1980’s, with footage taken by the Allies of the ‘camps’  and the inmates at the end of WW2, it’s about the only time I’ve been disturbed by images of the atrocities humans can commit on each other.

    • Calamity Jane says:

      10:01am | 25/10/12

      Really? no difference between seeing roadkill and an innocent human being killed in a senseless war?

      The real difference is that this is a human life, a person who is living under horrific circumstances, a person who has a family, who is loved, who will be mourned - that’s the real difference - it’s not morbit fascination - it’s horror.

    • nihonin says:

      10:28am | 25/10/12

      Not to me Calamity Jane, fact of life, we die.  Life continues for the living.

    • Admiral Ackbar says:

      11:38am | 25/10/12

      What makes a human life more valuable than any other Jane? The horrible things we do to each other and this planet doesn’t say much for us.

    • James1 says:

      12:25pm | 25/10/12

      Indeed nihonin and Admiral.  I once saw a joey sitting next to the carcass of its mother after she was killed by a car.  To my mind, it wasn’t a whole lot different to the pixelated picture above.

      We tell ourselves that animal lives are worth less than human lives because it is a comforting fiction, given the way we live our lives.  But there isn’t much in the way of an empirical or logical basis for this comforting fiction, when you really unpack the assumptions behind it.

    • neo says:

      02:58pm | 25/10/12

      Censorship in any way or form is wrong. It misleads and deceives people.

      Maybe if George Bush Sr saw the horrors of war while he was growing up, he wouldn’t turn into such a warmongering dick.

    • Craig says:

      05:51am | 25/10/12

      The failure to show reality is one reason why I don’t read the newspapers - or boy magazines… They are so funny in trying to hide what is while suspending disbelief.

      Reply

    • nihonin says:

      06:48am | 25/10/12

      I hope you meant to say ‘buy’ magazines not ‘boy’.  wink

    • NESLIHAN KUROSAWA says:

      06:14am | 25/10/12

      Hi Simon,

      Just hoping and thinking that you want to “make a difference” is good enough! However can these graphic pictures really explain the suffering of the Syrian people?  Especially Australia being so far away from the rest of the world, makes us feel that we happen to be very isolated and far away from all the trouble stops around the world.  I also wanted to know if today’s headlines and images of war in the newspapers will be remembered or forgotten by most of us?

      I personally don’t remember the details of the Vietnam war which began 1954 where 2 million Vietnamese civilians lost their lives and in Cambodia in 1970 there were also 4 million casualties of that war!  Did that also seem to worry the people of Australia, the USA and Europe then, I wonder?  And the war in Iraq more recently, how many innocent civilians lost their lives through no fault of their own?  Most importantly the World War II was the deadliest military conflict in history. Over 60 million people were killed, which was over 2.5% of the world population.

      So my question today is “have we all forgotten how World War I and World II began”? I am certain that most Germans and the rest of the EU remembers it very well.  It partly also began with the Japanese bombing Pearl Harbour and consequences were deadly and tragic to say the least. That particular war of course did affect Australia more directly.  And to this day the Japanese are blamed for many atrocities in Asia back then!  When we actually ask a typical German or Japanese how they all feel about the World War II, there is a definite silence in the air you can almost cut with a knife as well as a sort of shame and the most uncomfortable feeling ever. 

      My point happens to be that media is doing wonders when it comes to reporting from war zones and trouble spots around the world.  However are we only becoming more desensitized to the whole issue of innocent people getting killed so needlessly in such useless wars?  Kind regards.

      Reply

    • Nathan says:

      06:40am | 25/10/12

      Picking up on your Vietnam example, the media played a vital role in getting troops out of there. The North Vietnamese used the media to show people at home that the war was not going the way the US government was claiming. This increased the support to get troops out of Vietnam in the form of protests (admittedly a different era).

      I personally belief that the media can help to stop wars, i also think that you are probably right about people being desensitised but there are more than the traditional media streams to get the message out.

    • paul says:

      02:59pm | 25/10/12

      @Simon I understand how bad you feel each morning. Seeing Iraqi babies bloated and deformed from american bombs dropped with depleted uranium, altered my view of the word. hell they were always going to roll the iraqis why did they need to use depleted uranium? The cancer rates are beginning to match hiroshima. But the media is cruel and unjust @ NESLIHAN KUROSAWAn. Are you aware that Gaddafis former hometown has just been ,bombed for 12 days 100’s of women and children have been slaughtered. oh they are also Gassing them, lovely.  The NTC we put in with the medias help,. They just took the town and Libyans in london say some form of genocide is bout to come. The media cant pick and choose who is murderd, where is all the media here? Russia moved a motion, u will never guess who blocked it. why> 4 americans died in Benghazi, small chance may have been from the city currently being dismantled Bani-Whalid. You know the rule mass punishment on a sick scale. Media shh for a little till there dead.
      The Media calls Assad a butcher with 20,000 dead, Bush knew hundreds of thousans of people would die, for what Haliburton and oil? The media will never guide me while smacking me with constant Hypocrisies. Bahrainis get murdered because “iran wants Bahrain and they are terrorists”. Did Iran arm Jihadis to go and kill the rulling 10-15 sunnis? Are Saudi Arabia and Qatar funding Psycho Wahhabis to slaughter every christian, alawite, druze, innocent they come ? 110% confirmed. Iran the bad guy in” this” situation? Think if you were Assad, , Nearly a year ago The middle eastern top religious authorities on tv told al qeada and all jihadis it is there duty to kill every Alawite including women and children. Once you say that it is a fight to the death, that simple. Month ago rebels attacked border post next to Iraq, the soldiers protecting the border had nothing to do with the war. Cut all 24 of the soldiers arms of while they were still alive, then executed, all with in sight of shocked Iraqi soldiers on the other side.
      btw when Iran was attacked for 8 years by Saddam nearly every gulf country and the USA funded him with weapons and of course nerve gas. Iran broke from us sanctions took on and empire, The only country in the world that supported Iran was Assads father Hafiz.. Iran will never ever ditch the Assad family.

    • acotrel says:

      06:25am | 25/10/12

      In any war there is always a high level of hyp[ocrisy.  There are plenty of big money people about who have supported and exploited really crass regimes in their greedy quest, long before the people eventually rebel.  Assad could have been dealt with long before the situation degenerated t o this current situation. It has to do with ‘the cult of the individual’, and the belief that ‘greed is good’. - And your consciences !

      Reply

    • The Colonel says:

      08:03am | 25/10/12

      1. Good Morning resident dribbler.
      2. ‘Cult of the individual’...? Do you have any idea about Syria’s history? How Assad’s family were in power before him? How is that ‘individual’?
      3. ‘big money people’.. pray, tell, please advise as to who you are referring to? Is Richard Branson funding the rebels or something?

      And on another note…
      What is the issue with showing these images? Does it make you feel sick to your stomach? Diddums. It’s no different than watching a documentary on leopards stalking and killing prey. Are they mass-murderers and tyrants, too? They are certainly opportunistic, like most of the players in both sides of these conflicts. Just look back to Libya’s recent civil war. Almost every species on this planet has one common thing between them - the ability to kill.

      War has been one of the cornerstones of civilization since it’s inception. Every century you look at; every region of the world; there it is. It will never go away, especially in the Middle East. It’s their thing; they are always trying to kill each other, have been for hundreds if not thousands of years.

      Democracy, Dictatorship, Military State - it doesn’t matter. People will always get shat on, and they will eventually get pissed off enough, and rise up and take arms against their leaders. It’s only different in Australia as we don’t have a steady supply of AK’s and .50 cal’s to fight back with.

    • acotrel says:

      08:47am | 25/10/12

      @the colonel
      ‘. It’s no different than watching a documentary on leopards stalking and killing prey. Are they mass-murderers and tyrants, too? They are certainly opportunistic, like most of the players in both sides of these conflicts.’

      There is one obvious difference.  Wild animals are not rational, or intelligent enough to appreciate ethics.  What is Assad’s excuse ?  The reason the Shah of Iran was deposed is because he would not kill his own people !  Was that a human weakness ?  I would call it a strength of character.
      Assad will get his ! ‘What goes around comes around’ !  In the meantime we should all be ashamed to be of the same species !

    • Modern Primitive says:

      11:12am | 25/10/12

      I’m certainly ashamed to share genetic material with you.

    • andye says:

      12:24pm | 25/10/12

      @acotrel - “The reason the Shah of Iran was deposed is because he would not kill his own people !  Was that a human weakness ?  I would call it a strength of character.”

      If the Shah had ordered his troops to open fire, we may well be in a better situation today. The Iranian people certainly.

      A good simple example of the difference between pre and post 1979 is illuminated by the fact that before 1979 there was nudity on Iranian TV. The culture was open and quite liberated.

      He should have opened fire.

    • The Colonel says:

      01:31pm | 25/10/12

      Thanks, yet again, for completely ignoring the bulk of my post (which you clearly cannot refute), and focus on the one part of it that you think you can argue against.

      Well, allow me to retort.

      Another documentary I saw not long ago was of a Lioness hunting a wildebeest. Once the Lioness killed and ate the mother wildebeest, there was it’s baby/foal/whatever, scared and trying to run away form it’s mothers killer.

      The lioness licked it clean, picked it up by it’s scruff, and carried it away to safety.

      Are these your precious ‘ethics’ that you speak of?

      Why don’t you ask Labor where their ‘ethics’ have been for the past 4 years. Where are your ‘ethics’? You have backed this bunch of nitwits for the entire time I have been reading the Punch (several years now).

      In the gutter, is where they’ve been.

    • tez says:

      07:47am | 25/10/12

      When I read your post I immediatly remembered the image of the young Vietnamese girl running with napalm burns so I think these very striking pictures are very important and relevent to the way we see the world in conflict .

      Reply

    • Katherine Grant says:

      10:14am | 25/10/12

      tez if that photo haunts you, as it has me, you’ll be please to know that the girl is alive and well and living in Canada.  Apparently as soon as the photo was taken the journalist and photographer took all the children somewhere for medical aid.

    • tez says:

      10:47am | 25/10/12

      That is great Kath nothing like a happy ending

    • Troy Flynn says:

      10:50am | 25/10/12

      For me it’s the image of a soldier shooting a prisoner in the head from about 30cm away and seeing flesh, bone and cranial matter erupting out the back of his head. Don’t know if that was Vietnam or Cambodia.
      I also think it’s important to show people at home the reality of what goes on in war. How else will people resolve their desire to stop it.
      That’s is why I get my world news from Aljezeera. Although the english language version is also sanitised for a western audience they still show more than commercial networks here.
      I’m also led to believe that the Arabic version of the network does not pull ANY punches with what it shows. ie: no pixelation. Unfortunately I don’t understand Arabic.

    • Mikeymike says:

      11:51am | 25/10/12

      @ Troy Flynn

      It’s Vietnam.  And it was the summary execution of a captured enemy soldier in civilian clothes who had been caught red handed killing civilians behind the front lines.

      Under the legal conventions of the day (including the Geneva convention), any enemy combatants caught behind the enemy lines in civilian clothes was defined as a spy and subject to summary execution.

      Without that context, the image looks like the execution of a captured civilian.  With that context, it looks like the action of every army in every previous war.

    • simonfromlakemba says:

      12:33pm | 25/10/12

      That was the Vietnam War Troy, fairly well known picture.

      AlJezeera?, been hacking into satellites around Belmore? wink Its actually a pretty good station to watch.

      For me it was watching my friends video of a UN camp in Lebanon that was bombed by Israel, and seeing the dead bodies everywhere, pretty bad stuff.

    • John says:

      07:53am | 25/10/12

      The reality is, thousands of Syrians are dying in the middleast east in civil war, because Israel wants to have the power dominate all the their neighbors that surround them. The entire civil war in Syria, was planned, coordinated by Israel using the west as a proxy. If one looks at this closely you can clearly see how Israel has utter contempt for their neighbors, the west are just idiots following Israel orders as they become an accessory to all the deaths in Syria. Morally Israel is spent, the West is almost spent morally, for going tag team with Israel.

      Reply

    • Black Dynamite says:

      08:45am | 25/10/12

      brb getting tinfoil hat.

      BD

    • TheRealDave says:

      08:53am | 25/10/12

      Gold Johnno GOLD!! One of your best yet.

    • acotrel says:

      09:11am | 25/10/12

      It was all pre-planned by the British when they gave the Jews Palestine ! It was Arab oil that they were after.

    • Troy Flynn says:

      11:01am | 25/10/12

      Acotrel: I thought it was given to them as compensation for western world guilt over the horrible treatment of the Jews by the Nazi regime and so they could try to take back control of Jerusalem and bring about the second coming of Jesus. That’s what Christians fervently hope for isn’t it?

    • TEZZA says:

      12:54pm | 25/10/12

      John, you are a fool.
      What has Israel got to do with the civil war in Syria?
      Assad is bad guy, he is backed by Iran’s Shia regime and by Russia, and has for years imposed an authoritarian rule on his people.
      But the people opposing him (not Assad’s internal opponents so much, as the islamists and al quaeda types flooding into the country to do the fighting) may indeed be much worse.
      Do you think that Israel has any reason to back either side in this brutal conflict?

    • John says:

      01:41pm | 25/10/12

      The only real authoritarian rule is the authoritarian rule over the west, that demands western intelligence agency’s, western governments and the western media to back Islamic fundamentalists to overthrow the government of Syria for Israel’s long term benefit. Using Western tax payers money.

    • John says:

      02:27pm | 25/10/12

      Tezza, Israel wants to dominate the region, become the feared Genghis Khan. They have invaded, bombed every neighbor ever since their nation so called nation came into being, constantly conspiring, weakening, dividing and causing civil unrest in all their neighboring country’s, Israel’s main goal is to dominate.
      Their neighbors know this, so called peace proposals are just a bluff, they will never respect their neighbors. It’s either Israel dominates the entire region and others nations becomes slaves. This is why war is inevitable.

    • Greg in Chengdu says:

      03:03pm | 25/10/12

      Acotrel do you know anything about the history of isreal? obviously NOT! The british did not give palestine to the jews in actual fact they did everything they could to stop them getting hold of it. They did hand over their police station arms and other installations to the Arabs. read a book!

    • Greg in Chengdu says:

      03:06pm | 25/10/12

      John what a ridiculous statement Isreal is just trying to survive. i noticed you didn’t mention all the times Isreal has been bombed and rocketted

    • TheRealDave says:

      03:08pm | 25/10/12

      John, if Israel wanted to they would have by now - but since i know that facts aren’t your strongpoint I’ll let that slide wink

      All Israel have actually done is try to hold what was set aside for them. Maybe if her neighbours didn’t invade Israel with gay bandon, or maybe if htey didn’t sponsor the ongoing terrorism campaign against them or the decades of daily rocket attacks on its citizens etc then you might have some symapthy for Israeli incursions into nearby cross border areas to prevent the rocket attacks.

      But Israels neighbours are far to stupid for that. Its far easier treating your civilian poplace like crap and keeping them in poverty and blaming it on ‘the Jews’ isn’t it Johnno wink

    • ramases says:

      07:54am | 25/10/12

      The sad truth is that in war the innocents suffer and that’s a fact. While two sides are at each others throats there is nothing anybody can do to lessen the deaths of those deemed innocent and there never will be.
        The image doesn’t strike me as too powerful as I’ve seen many a dead body in my lifetime but these scenes are repeated daily in those countries that are wracked by war and its a sad fact of life and the media has a field day with them. remember the image of the young girl in Vietnam who was burnt by Napalm, this went viral without the aid of computers and every media of that day covered the story over and over again.
        This also highlights the inability of the UN to have any say in a countries internal affairs if there are certain countries that veto armed intervention for whatever reason. We watched Kofi Annan fail miserably in his attempts to stop this carnage and the ignoble withdrawal of the unarmed UN forces due to these factors.

      Reply

    • acotrel says:

      08:50am | 25/10/12

      So you are suggesting that UN forces should always go to war based on a majority vote ?  I wonder how you would implement that change ?

    • Karla says:

      08:02am | 25/10/12

      The adage of =1000 words was never more true. Vietnam’s famed napalm and officer execution pics, for sure. But hundreds of others of others over the last century—concentration camp survivors, the muddy hell of the Somme, even Cartier-Bresson’s sideways glance at a hearse. We read words and understand the story. We see a picture of another human and relate to the story.

      Reply

    • James1 says:

      09:18am | 25/10/12

      Sometimes pictures that are seemingly innocuous can affect us deeply.  I was once going through my great grandmother’s things several years after her death, and came across some photos from her youth in Ireland between 1901 and 1922 when she left.  I came across a photo of a line of 6 smiling young men, holding rifles, dressed in civilian clothes and standing in a field.  On the back of the photo, my nana had listed the names of all of them, and the dates that three of them died in action against the Black and Tans.

      I found myself staring at this photo and examining their faces, their clothes, and their rifles for quite a while, and pondering the momentous times they lives through, what they had done and the sacrifices they must have made.  It brought a tear to my eye.

    • Reader says:

      08:48am | 25/10/12

      I look at the TIME Pictures of the Week (warning: they DO sometimes have images of dead bodies) and find it’s an interesting perspective on the world and the many people in it.

      Reply

    • Fed Up says:

      09:02am | 25/10/12

      Whats news today is irrelevant tomorrow.
      The world is moving too fast.
      Does anyone know whats happening in Iraq at the moment?
      Unless you make an effort to dig you wont see much.
      Personally im more concerned about paying the bills and putting food on the table
      What happened in Syria today…wow….yeah…whatever…next..

      Reply

    • che says:

      09:09am | 25/10/12

      Yes these images are important for conveying a message and information. This particular photo and others like it have enabled people to learn about and have compassion for what is going on in Syria.

      Reply

    • AdamC says:

      09:59am | 25/10/12

      There are no ‘good guys’ in Syria, just alternative sets of bad guys.

      Most people are think visually, so it is no surprise that we are especially affected by images of suffering. Excessive use of disturning footage can therefore become little more than war pornography. By and large, I think the media in the West gets it about right when it comes to balancing realism with decency.

      Reply

    • Jay2 says:

      10:46am | 25/10/12

      I have mixed feelings about this subject.

      On one hand I can see how such images can be a powerful instrument in stirrring emotions that result in a will to try and make a difference in the current situation.  The same images may give a very real “human aspect” to a story that the reader can relate too. A Father cradling his dead son, caught in his own personal world of unimagineable grief and pain, a hideous reminder that this madness MUST stop! Another addition to a catalgoue of crimes against humanity, that we must learn from, remember always.
      Then, on the other side,  that same image, is so personal, so private , does anybody have the right or permission to intrude on a moment in time that will most likely be that Father’s most excrutiating in his life?(even for teh ‘greater good”)  What would the Father want, did anybody think to ask? Did he want to be photographed with his precious lost son? I wonder…

      If you lost your child, say, in a car accident, would you want photographs of your child published and your wife/husband’s raw grief captured on film for all to see? (even if it was used, eg, to promote safe driving, speed kills)
      I don’t think I would and I don’t think I would have the state of mind to be able to either given consent or reason with the photographer not to take those images. In some situations, there is something downright ‘vulturish’ in a person photographing another’s tragic vulnerability.
      At least as a reader, we generally have A CHOICE whether we view or read such images/articles etc, the subject in the photo mostly does not have a choice.
      Maybe the question shouldn’t be whether the reader can handle the unpixelated truth, but rather does one have the right to take such images when the subject is going through such deep trauma and in a vulnerable state of shock.

      A very fine line of reporting with integrity and reporting for exploitation, I feel.
      As I say, I’ve mixed feelings about this.

      Reply

    • BruceS says:

      10:56am | 25/10/12

      Thank you Simon. The images from the Middle East ought to be shown, just to give naive Australians a picture of our local, not too distant future, if we do not FIX all immigration, very soon.

      Reply

    • Chris L says:

      10:59am | 25/10/12

      Some friends in the army told me that the news gives 10% of the story. I have no reason to doubt them.

      Regarding pictoral truth, I agree they have far greater effect than emotive speeches about bad guys.

      I figure this must be why Obama decided not to release photos of Gitmo inmates being interrogated in an “enhanced” manner. Despite the political advantages of doing so, he would also have been wary of how galvanising they would be for those who oppose the US (whether jealous of their freedoms or sick of their domination, all depending on whether you consider them terrorists or freedom fighters).

      Reply

    • Troy Flynn says:

      12:34pm | 25/10/12

      Yes, the photo’s that came out of Abu Graib were used by Al Queda as a recruitment tool, but that treatment of prisoners by people who are supposed to be better than that needed to be exposed.

    • the cynic says:

      01:22pm | 25/10/12

      Photos of the scatterred remains of any suicide bomber have done nothing to deter others. The best I ever saw was of a lone head, eyes open sitting about 100 feet away from torn fragments of the remaining bits of this person. The funniest bit of the whole picture was thinking to myself just how this idiot was going to deflower all those virgins he was promised upon meeting up with all his mates before him.

    • David V. says:

      11:22am | 25/10/12

      They should expose the Assad regime’s many crimes in Lebanon against its Christian population in particular, and the long list of assassinations attributable to it and its proxies.

      Reply

    • Warwick says:

      11:41am | 25/10/12

      I was astonished by the cynicism that some people manifested when they offered their comments.

      Reply

    • Dan Webster says:

      12:23pm | 25/10/12

      I feel very sorry for that father in the picture. I have a son around the same age.
      R.I.P to the child.

      There are plenty of internet sites that show all of the horrors that happen in Syria on a daily basis. What a tragedy Syria has become.
      Humans can be extremely savage at times.

      Reply

    • Tony Bee says:

      01:09pm | 25/10/12

      How times have changed. When I went for a job at a newspaper in the 1980s, the questions were all around how I felt about the images of dead bodies that appeared in the paper on an almost daily basis. Unedited images of the Vietnam War helped to end it. We should never sanitise wars.

      Reply

    • Frank Kape says:

      01:42pm | 25/10/12

      I am overwhelmed, as a father and as a human being, by this image. Much like I was with the footage of a Palestinian father and son dying in a rain of bullets some years ago. 
      There is something especially tragic for me, when one sees a father grieving over a dead child. The worse is that there is a sense of loneliness,  personal grieving in a sea of grief in this photo. Who is there for this man? Who is comforting him? He is alone with the broken body of his son.
      Sadly many of those who manage wars, start wars or fund wars, never have to cradle their dying children. I have no answers to the question of whether we should see these images but I do find some of the responses by the commentators to this report banal and cruel.
      There needs to be cautious editorship exercised when it comes to images. As a former editor of a newspaper various images from agencies haunted me for days, yet I was careful to choose images that could send a message. A message that said ‘do something about this’ or ‘did you know that this is going on?’
      The first war photographs that traumatised people and actually challenged heroic mythology were those of dead young men during the American Civil War. Have wars stopped? No. But we are globally more concerned with trying to achieve some peace. Images do work when used with sensitivity.
      All I know is that when I go home I will hug my 10 year old son for as long as I can.

      Reply

    • Rebecca says:

      01:46pm | 25/10/12

      It’s important to understand what’s going on in the word, but no, I can not handle seeing dead bodies every day. I can’t even handle watching the anti-smoking ads on TV - they’re way too gruesome.

      Reply

    • Fotis says:

      02:09pm | 25/10/12

      Sorry Rebecca but it is not about you, and what you can handle, it is about driving change and creating awareness. It was the constant filming of the Vietnam War that created such a dramatic anti-Vietnam War movement and possibly stopped the war from continuing longer, it was the images of the Nazi concentration camps which helped bring to focus people’s desire to bring to trail Nazi war criminals, it was the footage and images of the Balkan Wars which again ensured the involvement of NATO which helped again bring that war to an end. Images are important, it’s not about being comfortable. But, yes I agree, gruesome almost fetishist fascination with TV and media horror is not what should happen.

    • Swamp Thing says:

      02:10pm | 25/10/12

      The morbid curiosity of modern audiences knows no bounds.
      Some probably feel less depraved by their possibly purient interest to justify it on the grounds ‘they need to be informed’ (cue much sage nodding).
      Nonsense of course, the world is replete with horrors - many of them find us all eventually through accident, incident or vocation - why be in such a hurry to see?
      In any case photos/video will in no way prepare you for the reality.

      Reply

    • Tanya says:

      02:22pm | 25/10/12

      I once went to a photo journalism exhibition in Sydney that I think was compiled by John Pilger. The theme was inhumanity and the pictures were arranged so as to depict an array of human failings such as racial hatred and violence that lead to war and genocide which followed on as the ultimate tragedies. I have never forgotten the series of grotesque images of the Vietnam war – dead bodies and frightened or grief stricken families that extended along either side of a long narrow corridor. But at the very end there was a black and white photo of an American soldier with no legs sitting in a wheelchair. Some children, presumably his, were sitting beside him on a wooden floor playing with his medals. The poignancy of that image by contrast to the others was striking and it was positioned that way to drive home the point that despite having knowledge of atrocities in other countries, we are to some degree culturally removed.

      Reply

    • HereComesDaJudge says:

      03:02pm | 25/10/12

      Fact is that we just don’t care anymore!

      For decades now, we have been inundated with every gruesome image you can imagine, 24/7, never ending ......... plus toss in natural disasters, pleas for financial assistance and every hard luck story day in day out and we are completely hardened to them all!

      Dead bodies, bits of humans, dead animals, injured this, injured that, never ending, you name it and we have seen it!

      I can happily munch on my vanilla ice cream swamped in strawberry syrup and watch some cable TV channel showing dozens of dead and injured bodies and not even turn a hair!

      We just don"t care now!

      Reply

    • the needy rich says:

      03:17pm | 25/10/12

      channel 9 and its digital channels look like this photo on my television set

      Reply

    • Karen says:

      04:39pm | 25/10/12

      Ignorance is bliss…..... not! 
      Education, information and understanding change policies and attitudes.
      If you post photos to shock people I think failure will ensue, however if you post a picture with a story it can help educate….

      Reply

    • St. Michael says:

      06:04pm | 25/10/12

      The hypocrisy of the responses to this article, given the Outraged Atheist Shrieks on display in the thread a few steps up, is highly amusing.  You’re happy for blood and guts with your Weetbix but you don’t want people to give verbal accounts of the Crucifixion?

      Reply

    • James O says:

      06:34pm | 25/10/12

      It’s death or sudden death that creates the sense of shock in people it provides a vicarious afterlife experience of what death may be all about and how suddenly living can come to an end by an act of extreme violence or atrocity. Westerners generally live in a closeted world of relative comfort the enthusiasts of history can read or write about violence in comfort because they are fortunate to have avoided such times as those experienced by the generations of the two world wars, then the hardened attitudes created by years of death and violence desensitized a whole generation familiar with war and it took another geneation to understand peace. The curiosity with death is natural but facing up to a disconnected alternative violent reality unrelated to your own every day life by viewing photos or videos of death will not make the world any better. The day that a car crash victim provides the real time experience of how temporary and fragile we all will answer all your questions.

      Reply
 
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