Ethical photo considerations

There is one side of me that would say to run the photos. After all, they really do tell a story. A person who has a fence post through his cheek tells a powerful story, as does the one taken on Fat Tuesday in Seattle. A story is not even needed, the photo tells it all. In that respect, they are good photos.

On the other hand, these are photos designed to make people cringe. They tell the most gruesome stories out there, and will no doubt elicit the most extreme response from readers. A standard newspaper is not design to disgust people, just inform them.

I will have to say that the latter wins out in my reasoning to not run the photos. A picture usually does tell a better story than words, but in this case, the person can choose to stop reading if anything gets too graphic. A photo does not offer those choices. Once a person sees it, it is in their mind for good.

This choice would stay the same if the photos were local or otherwise. In fact, if the photos were local, my choice would be even more inclined to not run them, just because a whole community does not need to see one of its members in a position like that. It's not protecting them per se, but it does minimize harm in the community, which is always a helpful thing.

These photos are really unrunnable anywhere in the paper. I don't want to do that to the readers of a paper. The only photo that I would even consider to run is the one with the dog killed by a car. There is a dog killed in there, not a human. I'm still not inclined to run it, but that is the one I would even consider the least. It is still not a line I would wish to cross though.