Read the chapter on WELCOME TO SARAJEVO in our text. In light of the
arguments and observations in it are the photos in the link below
justified or not? Respond by Sunday, April 14, 4 p.m.
http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/23/archive-5/
Teaching Notes
You must become the flame on the candle. - Thich Nhat Hanh
Thursday, April 11, 2013
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Is Media Ethics Education DOA?
It sounds like a joke Jay Leno would tell during his opening monologue on The Tonight Show. Hear about the graduate students at the prestigious journalism school? They got caught cheating on an ethics exam. Ha ha ha. Except that’s actually what happened at Columbia University
No one admitted cheating despite pressure from the school’s administrators and pleas from classmates, who feared the scandal would damage the market value of their degrees. Meanwhile, the teacher of the course, New York Times columnist Samuel G. Freedman, refused to comment. But if the disgruntled posts on RateMyProfessors.com are any indication, his students hadn’t exactly been soaking up knowledge. “Maybe he could e-mail his ‘speeches’ to the students instead of making everyone suffer through the most wasted class in j-school. . . ,” one read.
There’s an old cowboy saying that goes, “When your horse dies, get off.” Journalism ethics education is a dead horse. Or else those aren’t vultures circling in the sky.
No one admitted cheating despite pressure from the school’s administrators and pleas from classmates, who feared the scandal would damage the market value of their degrees. Meanwhile, the teacher of the course, New York Times columnist Samuel G. Freedman, refused to comment. But if the disgruntled posts on RateMyProfessors.com are any indication, his students hadn’t exactly been soaking up knowledge. “Maybe he could e-mail his ‘speeches’ to the students instead of making everyone suffer through the most wasted class in j-school. . . ,” one read.
There’s an old cowboy saying that goes, “When your horse dies, get off.” Journalism ethics education is a dead horse. Or else those aren’t vultures circling in the sky.
A Question for Socrates
The question of how ethics is learned, or even if it can be, is as old as Western philosophy. In Plato’s dialog Meno the title character asks, “Can you tell me, Socrates, whether virtue is acquired by teaching or by practice; or if neither by teaching nor practice, then whether it comes to man by nature, or in what other way?” Of course, Socrates, being Socrates, resists giving a definite answer. But we can’t. The sad fact is, students had better get an effective ethics education now or they may never.
Last summer I conducted an ethics workshop for some reporters and editors at the Poughkeepsie Journal, a small daily in upstate
But what I remember most is the air of defeat that clung to the staff as we sat on hard plastic chairs in the break room discussing the cases. I could hear in their voices the bitterness and cynicism of employees forced to follow corporate policies they despised. Recently, for example, the paper had started running display ads on the front page and section fronts, a much more grievous ethical lapse, their mumbled asides suggested, than anything the case studies might have to offer.
I don’t want my students to ever wear the gray, defeated expression I saw that day on the faces at the Journal. But given the downward direction in which the media are moving, and fast, how in the world can I prevent it from happening?
Teaching Media Ethics by Telling Stories
A friend of mine who teaches at a big Midwestern university recounts in class the events of her first week as a reporter for the Minneapolis Tribune. She was sent to Duluth to cover Democratic presidential candidate Hubert Humphrey on the campaign trail. When they were introduced, Humphrey vigorously shook her hand. “Oh yes, Susan,” he said, “I read your stuff all the time.” He couldn’t have read her stuff, though; she hadn’t written anything yet. “Just a few words,” she explains to her students, “but words that taught this fledging reporter a great lesson about pols and the little lies they tell.”
I usually find occasion during the semester to quote I. F. Stone’s dictum, “Every government is run by liars and thieves, and nothing they say should be believed,” to make the same point. But Susan’s story makes the point better. That’s because it has existential force. Her story vividly captures in a way a secondhand quote can’t the realities of a reporter’s life.
Some might think telling “war stories” is a waste of precious class time. I’ve a colleague who didn’t want to fall into the “trap” of regaling students with stories ad nauseam (“which, let’s face it, is easier than teaching or grading,” he said). So one semester he kept track. When he toted it all up at the end, he was surprised that he’d used less than an hour - out of 45 – talking about his newspaper experiences. And yet, he admitted, it was his stories that students seemed to remember most.
“Stories teach us how to live,” Daniel Taylor said in his essay, “The Ethical Implications of Storytelling.” What he meant was that stories preserve our experience for contemplation and evaluation. Although not all stories carry a heavy message, there’s an entire category of stories, so-called “exemplary tales,” that are told to convey a moral.
Our war stories are potentially just such tales. They can provide evidence, in ethicist John Barton’s words, of “how real human beings live through various crises and trials and remain human.” My colleague who kept tabs on his storytelling has described his stories as cautionary. Most, he said, deal with “screwups I learned from.”
But sometimes the storyteller and the audience can’t agree on what exactly the moral of a story is.
When Susan was a cub reporter on the Tribune, she interviewed the Beatles, who were on their second tour of the States. She got into their hotel room by dressing up as a waitress in an ugly, mustard-colored uniform and accompanying an actual room service waiter upstairs. Ringo took one look at her little plastic name tag – it read “Donna Brown” – and snorted, “What kind of name is that?” The waiter nudged her in the side. “Tell them what you real name is,” he urged. She did, as well as her reason for being there. Rather than throw her out, the Beatles politely answered her questions. They even let her phone for a photographer. The next day her story ran on the front page, with a photo of John sitting at a table and looking up at her and laughing as she poured coffee in his cup. She still has a glossy print of that photo somewhere.
Many of Susan’s students think she’s nuts for not having the photo hanging up in her office. They also think she’s nuts for saying she’d never participate in the same kind of stunt today. To her celebrity-struck students, disguising herself as a hotel waitress to get an interview with the Beatles seems soooo cool. They lose all sight of the fact that it wasn’t a story of vital public interest that demanded undercover methods.
Susan intends one lesson when she talks about her hard day’s night, but her students, living in a paparazzi-saturated culture, draw another. “It may be a lost cause,” she remarked to me.
Or maybe not. Negotiations over what the point of a story is can be part of the point of the story. In the process of negotiating, we test different interpretations, try out different themes. This is helpful. This is educational. Lawrence Kohlberg, the Harvard psychologist famous for his research on the stages of moral development, contended that “the teaching of virtue is the asking of questions. . . not the giving of answers.” Stories don’t necessarily have to yield clear moral rules to be of value. It’s enough sometimes if they just give us something to think about.
21 comments:
After reading the section on “Welcome to Sarajevo” continues to make me think that the definition and demands of journalism are impossible criteria to meet within anyone’s human nature. I believe the headline of the chapter “ we’re not here to help” raises a series of questions and concerns when trying to justify the use of the New York Times photos. For instance, Life magazine states ... “[The President and War Department] decided that the American people ought to be able to see their own boys as they fall in battle; to come directly and without words into the presence of their own dead.” Is this really a form of journalism if it is “without words” sure photos can “say” a thousand words, but journalism is supposed to report on the truth and the facts, when photos leave these facts up to the imagination and do not define the photos, the stories become free-for-alls, which in turn adds to the unethical side of the argument. I understand that by putting images in front of people it makes them believe what is happening, however if this is the route people need to go in order to believe a tragedy it must be done in the most ethical way possible. For instance, if showing photos of the deceased, gaining rights from the family prior to publishing can make the situation slightly less controversial. However, I do believe that the art in writing can relay a story better than images, which is why I believe when publishing any photos it takes much more effort to justify one’s actions rather than printing the story.
Regarding the photos of soldiers during combat, I think these are more justified than snapping photos of helpless victims in war torn Bosnia. The photos of the soldiers' especially in Vietnam, really fueled a lot of protests and demands to bring them home. I truly believe media exposure helped to show Americans what was really going on overseas and how our soldiers were suffering. Also, each photo showed other soldiers helping the victim. In Sarajevo, a photographer or journalist would shove cameras in a wounded civilian's face and then carry on, leaving the person helpless and basically to die. In the chapter of the book, the argument is how empathy can affect the validity of a story and whether or not journalists should be empathetic or not. Well in my professional opinion as a student and journalist, I think it is our number one job to be empathetic to victims and soldiers of course, especially in war torn countries where the oppressor is obviously the enemy and in the wrong. I just keep going back to the rule, comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. It is pointless to stay objective where an obvious wrong is being committed. How else will we get readers and viewers to see that too?
"Welcome to Sarajevo" definitely makes the ethical argument that the NY Times photos should not be published. The photojournalists mentioned in Sarajevo were not able to show empathy to the people they were photographing, because that would have made it impossible to do their jobs. This reading makes it clear that this is an ethical dilemma. While the first responsibility of a journalist or a photographer is to inform the public, hopefully with the truth, information has no value if it does not incite emotion or change. Journalists who fail to empathize with what they are reporting will not be able to do their job as thoroughly, yet they must remain detached in the modern world to do their job at all. In this light, "Welcome to Sarajevo" suggests that the photos in the link below simply cater to sensationalism, rather than inciting useful social change, and are therefore better off not being published.
After reading Professor Good's chapter "Welcome to Sarajevo," I was left contemplating the role empathy plays in journalism and if such a role still exists. Like Professor Good, I found it frustrating and disturbing that the word "empathy" wasn't included in many media ethics textbooks. This demonstrates that professors are not stressing the importance of this value and many young journalists are being trained to go straight for the story, without much regard for how the people they're reporting about are faring as human beings. On page 150, Professor Good notes that many journalists strive to suppress empathy in order to stay objective in news stories and not let their personal opinions and biases shine through. However, this fact-of-the-matter attitude runs the risk of ignoring human suffering and exploiting it for the sake of a story. Though journalists, as we learn, are often frowned upon for taking a humanitarian role in reporting,its important for journalists to remember the respect they owe their subjects. As Anna Quindlen said, "perhaps the most important obligation [journalists have] is the one we owe the subjects of our stories, whose lives are limited by our words." However, it is clear different journalists have contrasting views on how deep that obligation should run. In the movie "Welcome to Sarajevo," Nicholson writes that "your writing can help change the way the world is. By making it public, by showing suffering, by showing war, and corruption, you're going to help change it." However, SUNY New Paltz Ottaway professor Deborah Amos stressed that journalists do not write to change policy at a recent appearance on campus. This is an important perspective to keep in mind, because all journalists should ask themselves what they're really hoping to achieve by publishing gruesome content and images.
That being said, the photos included in the link are in good taste. These images, though graphic, do not put an overemphasis on the gore or victim of the situation, but rather, place a greater focus on the situation as a whole. These images do not merely frame bodies, but try to capture the world in which these people were killed and WHY they died. Often, the reactions and actions of those around them are captured as well, broadening the issues touched upon in the photos. These images give Americans back home a taste of war what is like and what their soldiers are going through. I find the images to be informative rather than exploitative.
The chapter on "Welcome to Sarajevo" argues for validity, or even the necessity, of empathy to better inform a journalists ability to report the truth. Detailed in the reading is the counter-argument to this idea, which is that journalists who get too close, or too emotionally involved, are compromising their objectivity on the subject. With these thoughts in mind, when we look at horrific images from wars I believe a case can be made that the publishing of these images is justified. While the book discussed the minimal effectiveness of the pictures being taken in Sarajevo to incite action in the west, I believe that images of citizens from your home nation, as are being discussed here, are far more likely to illicit an empathetic response. It's much easier to imagine someone who could have been your neighbor as a real person with a real life, rather than just another number or another casualty of some foreign nation. By getting that close-to-home reaction, the journalists publishing these photos are getting the nation to discuss the horrors of the war, a truth which exists regardless of whether you support a war or not.
It is this very notion which can be applied for situations today. Regardless of where you stand on the issue of gun control, seeing an image of a dozen children dead, all of them shot down, truly shows that there is an issue. But can one who is empathetic of a situation publish a photo that will give more stress to a grieving widow or parent? Maybe then one assumes an approach via Utilitarianism. Will the publishing of this photo stop further atrocities from happening?
On the issue of these photos I am afraid that I carry a little bit of bias. My father and I are both avid photographers, and from an early age I was taught how important photos are. Even after studying journalism and journalism ethics I still believe that photos have a unique, powerful ability to tell a story that is free from fluff. By this I mean that words in articles can be manipulated; writers can tailor their work for a specific audience, they can write down or they can write so eloquently that many readers might struggle to understand them. Pictures on the other hand are universal. Pictures don't speak a language, and anyone can understand them. Of course, in a journalism context it helps to have captions and explanations under a photograph, but images will always speak on their own. I think that these photographers acted ethically by doing their jobs; they documented the war, and the soldiers. Unlike in Sarajevo they did not focus on victims, which is something I found completely disturbing. These photographs served to bring information to the public, the same way an article does. Just like reporters the job of a photojournalist is to document the event. I cannot imagine how heart-wrenching it must be to travel to worn torn areas, I would like to think that every person would wish to help, but that is not the job of a reporter or photojournalist. I do believe that any reporter must remain empathetic in order to do their jobs, but at one point does that become impossible? You cannot help every victim, and you cannot change the situation on your own. Empathy is often lost in the harsh realities of our profession. I think the silver lining in this is realizing that a reporter or photographer can help in their own unique way: the power of the media and documentation can often create lasting impacts that make a huge difference in the world.
Empathy is "the ability to feel with and/or for others" and therefore is "essential for moral interaction" (149). According to the reading, in in my own interpretation, a journalist must use empathy to fuel their work, but not put it into action. However, when choosing which photos and information to share with the world, journalists can be viewed as lacking empathy and only searching for the most ratings and stardom. A journalist must also remain neutral. If they are covering war, they must cover all parts of it, not just the side they favor or the side they are against. Their coverage cannot become political, even though often times it does in our society. From the pictures featured in the New York Times, I don't think that the photojournalists lacked empathy. The photos were taken from enough distance from the dead bodies that it was not intrusive to the dead person or his/her family members. The face couldn't be seen. Most of the pictures favor the soldiers and show them sticking together as a team. This could be mistaken as political and looking for patriotic support of the newspaper. I don't feel that way, however. I think that pictures are informative for civilians who are not familiar with war and what soldiers do or those who think soldiers are savages.
"Welcome to Sarajevo" brings up the issue of what should and should not be published in the world of journalism. These photographs that were published in newspapers and magazines can be very upsetting to some. The pictures feature dead bodies, laying on the ground and being carried by other soldiers. Yes, it sends a powerful message of how life actually is in war but I think that there are better ways to send this message. Showing the faces of dead soldiers is unethical because it harms the family and friends of the deceased. They do not need the painful images of their loved ones sent around the world for everyone to see. I believe that we should be informing the public, but not in a way that can be hurtful to others.
The chapter on Sarajevo and empathy reminds me of our first day of class when we discussed the subway picture. When asked if we would have published the picture, I didn’t agree that it should have been, but it did help warn people of the possibility of getting pushed onto the tracks like that man had been. It was helpful but also harmful, so the question is whether its helpfulness outweighed the hurt. I think that when pictures of dead bodies and now in the viral world videos as well are published, it gives faces to the hurt and situation. By showing this, it makes it a lot more real and feasible then just hearing a number of how many died. I think there is a point where the line has to be drawn though, because some of the pictures are simply too vulgar and unnecessary. For example the empire state shooting picture with the blood on the sidewalk did not need to be published because the shooter had been stopped and the picture was not published to warn anyone about a situation. Also, the video we viewed of all of the dead bodies was horrible to see, and although it was meant to show that the country was in serious need of help, it was very vulgar and hard to watch. By publishing these pictures and videos, it exploits those who have been hurt or killed and hurts their families even more. If my loved one had been shot at the empire state building, it would absolutely destroy me to see his picture plastered on every newspaper there was. The message should be to help or inform the public when publishing these items, and shouldn’t be harmful or hurtful for people to see.
The relationship between empathy and journalism is one that is difficult to pinpoint. We all know the power emotions can have on a person, however empathy can help guide people to produce something that does not hurt the public. I am not sure where empathy belongs in a journalistic perspective. I think pictures such as the one posted can provide a sort of insight for the public to things that may otherwise be left in the dark. When we discussed the whole issue with the gun control maps, I think it was interesting we looked at the motives behind the posting. I think photos and articles that tend to violate or disregard empathy are sometimes necessary to fuel a greater good. However, in some instances the greater good does not exist and I believe that is when such photographs should not be posted. One must be able to have empathy but not let it be the sole decision making mechanism.
This chapter stresses the journalist's duty to maintain an ethical balance between empathy and objectivity. It is important to remain empathetic in order to act in good taste and to make ethical decisions, but journalists must remain somewhat detached in order to convey their subject matter in an unbiased and truthful manner. In regards to war photos, I think it's justified if the photos are informative and emotional without being overly grotesque. It is the duty of a photojournalist to convey an accurate depiction of the story without exploiting gore and violence, and I think the photos in the link are a good example of that.
In response to the article and the text… I think the truth of the matter is honesty. We are living in a world where that is often very hard to come by. Right?
I’m usually against intimate pictures of those in pain and moments away from death; I don’t believe it’s necessary. I think how my mom would feel if it was a picture of me or my sister. She’d be crushed to have to see that, and hurt thinking the world was invited into this private moment.
But I also don’t believe in war, and how we treat things we aren’t directly related to in the country.
The way I see it is we now speak the language called “images”. We breathe them in daily, and use them as a sole form of communication. They are everything and they are everywhere. Its important to remember that there is a war going on and we lose people everyday to it.. I think some of these pictures should be published . We should know to what extent this war is real. I agree with the argument that having facial features shown make it more uncomfortable and that’s when I start to stray from my argument. But some of these images are necessary. We give into a lot of systems. The government for one, corporations,hidden advertising agendas, google and facebook. People running these things aren’t real, they don’t exist in the sense that our brothers, mothers and sisters do but these kids dying in this war are R E A L. They are fighting and losing everything, and we sit here sort of turning our heads because it’s easier. We then loose our sense of empathy, our sense of honesty and how to deal with real situations. So I think it’s important to show images that guide our understanding, it’s ethical because then we don’t become numb to the idea that we are losing kids everyday, to something cold and dark and scary. These images have an opportunity to keep us honest.
Can empathy exist in journalism without the content being considered too subjective, or painting the journalist as too emotionally involved? Is there a way to expose powerful events such as death and war without offending/horrifying others? I believe that somewhere there is a line that must be drawn in order to protect the privacy of mourning families/well-being of viewers when it comes to widely known, distributed publications. At the same time, I believe that this line is a subjective one depending on the tolerance of the viewer/journalist as well. So can it be possible to find a unifying line, or will someone always end up offended as a result? From my point of view, the photos in the NYT article aren't offensive and are justified. I think they allow viewers to get an inside look at the horrors the military face while on the front lines of war. I think its doing its job in suggesting that war is a horrible thing. But I am also not related to any of the dead/dying soldiers being captured in any of these photographs. I believe that a personal bond would change my stance, and I would think differently.
"Empathy" is a funny thing--people often forget that it exists until the moments they themselves feel it. But it truly is the bedrock of morality, propelling humans past the animal-like behavior that some parts of the world cannot escape. The destruction and violence described in Sarajevo is truly heartbreaking. I agree that to stand idly by is sometimes not an option, even for a so-called objective journalist. On the other hand, journalists strive to seek and report the truth, and sometimes the truth is ugly. I think that taking some of those pictures couldn't have been easy, but were taken in the name of informing the public and keeping a record of history. Of course journalists must consider the victims with empathy, but also have a job to leave a record of such horrors in an attempt to eliminate them from the world stage in the future.
The chapter in the book takes me back to the first days of class when we were discussing the subway image and the image taken from a man dead outside the Empire State Building. We discusssed what is too much to show. Journalists are supposed to be empathetic while staying objective and unbiased. The war photos from the link were not TOO gruesome to show in my opinion. They were mostly of soldiers laying dead and not up close and personally in their wounds. These photos are a good message of the damages war can do to soldiers on the front-line and for a nation.
Thee photos in the NY times I believe are more justified then most photos that are taken during war. The chapter Welcome To Sarajevo reminded me a lot about the photo that was shown in class of a hawk that looked like t was about to attack a very malnourished young child. This chapter talked a lot about empathy and justification. In a situation like that, I's extremely difficult for a journalist to make the decision of what to do.Do they capture the moment or do they help the child? I feel that many of the situations in this chapter used moral decision. The photos in the NY Times I fell were more justified because it did not require decisions and issues such as this and were more capturing action and other moments.
After taking this class and reading these chapters, I find that the value of our work is grounded in how we make decisions. For instance, how thoroughly we reflect on the importance of the issues at hand and what resources we use to come to our conclusions. Empathy, to me, is the starting point and the finish line, but traditional journalism tells us differently. Professionals are told to take the emotions out of what they are reporting in order to report an objective piece so journalists are intrinsically going to avoid how they feel in many cases. I believe that this is the fundamental issue with empathy. Professor Good alludes to this when he says that many journalists strive to suppress empathy in order to stay objective in news stories and not let their personal opinions and biases shine through. Ultimately, I feel that any media profession requires the person to reflect on what it is that he or she is trying to accomplish by being in the given field. What is it that motivates and drives them to do their work? The answers to these questions will likely show how empathy will play a role in a professionals careers path and how they much will respect the lives they influence. This certainly applies to those who publish unnecessary gruesome content and images for personal gains. That being said, the photos from the link are appropriate and seem to be grounded in strong ethical values. Though they are graphic they seem to focus on the realities and situations as a whole rather than overemphasizing gruesome particular situations. It becomes less focused on individuals and more focused on the systems, meaning that there is a larger goal at hand that is being accomplished without sacrificing the vulnerable individuals. These images allow others to have a more clear perception with an informative emphasis rather than a flamboyant drama scene that seems like a recent die hard movie.
I do not believe these photos are justified. After reading your essay Welcome to Sarajevo, I have a better understanding on the instances you might consider a graphically violent photo justified. However, these photos of dead American soldiers do not meet the qualifications of what Greg McLaughlin would call "'something must be done' journalism" (p. 157). According to Ed Vulliamy, "there are moments in history... when neutrality is not neutral, but complicit in the crime" (p. 156). The issue with this set of photographs is that they do not illustrate a specific call to action from the greater public to help put a stop to these atrocities. These photos do a great job of presenting a wide variety of instances throughout history where wounded American soldiers have been photographed. However, they have been used in this article to provoke discussion about the question "should disturbing images of war violence be shown to American civilians in news papers," not "how can we put an end to the conflict in _______?" Yes the article implies some kind of call to action, but the action it calls for is a discussion rather than a philanthropic movement. Besides, in the siege of Sarajevo, the key detail that incited some journalists to abandon their impartiality was the fact that innocent children were often the victims of random, senseless, violent attacks. When Michael Nicholson found himself compelled to adopt an orphaned child while reporting from Bosnia, it was because he had collected the facts, identified the truth, and found that his journalistic obligation to act ethically trumped his obligation to report objectively. Nicholson would not have been wrong to include photographs of the violence in Sarajevo if it would help raise awareness about the slaughter of children there. While the issue of violent war photographs in news is certainly not trivial, it is not necessary to use these photographs to incite discussion about them. The article could've even been as effective with just one photograph instead of a whole slideshow.
What is empathy and honestly really mean? Throughout professor goods course, empathy has been a key concept of discussion, with many different opinions and outlooks of the connection with empathy, a journalist and his/her work. It has been said numerous times that empathy is a key quality journalist need to withhold in order to maintain the right objective towards the story being made an published, without his/her actual position or feeling truthfully on the matter at hand in order to set the grounds appropriately. When it comes to the photos, while some are quite graphic it is showing a lot of strong ethical pieces as well. The main focus of these photos is to deliver one message to its audience so they can really understand the main point they are trying to get across. I believe these photos were okay to show because soldiers with injuries and these specific scenes are happening everyday, and people should know about it and understand what some people are dealing with. It is news, and news is important to know and follow no matter how upsetting or ugly it is to look at.
What is empathy and honestly really mean? Throughout professor goods course, empathy has been a key concept of discussion, with many different opinions and outlooks of the connection with empathy, a journalist and his/her work. It has been said numerous times that empathy is a key quality journalist need to withhold in order to maintain the right objective towards the story being made an published, without his/her actual position or feeling truthfully on the matter at hand in order to set the grounds appropriately. When it comes to the photos, while some are quite graphic it is showing a lot of strong ethical pieces as well. The main focus of these photos is to deliver one message to its audience so they can really understand the main point they are trying to get across. I believe these photos were okay to show because soldiers with injuries and these specific scenes are happening everyday, and people should know about it and understand what some people are dealing with. It is news, and news is important to know and follow no matter how upsetting or ugly it is to look at.
According to the chapter in the text, I believe that these photos would have been considered ethical. One point that was made that sticks out most to me was the part about the little girl who asked for help and the reporter realized the best way to help was to try to tell her story. I think these photos are gruesome and that no one wants to see them (besides for the humanistic interest in the grotesque) but they are the best way to show what is happening and may be the best way to move the American public towards change. If I were an editor , I would not publish those photos in a newspaper or in an online newspaper, but I would not object to them in a blog section and I think they could potentially have even more of an effect on society. Empathy, as related in the text, is different for the photographer in the field and the editor in the newsroom. The photographer is immersed in the tragedy and empathy can be a very valuable and potent tool that can be used to convey a message. Empathy on the part of the editor in the newsroom happens with physical and emotional distance. It isn't as potent and powerful, and feels disturbing in a different way because of how removed from the situation they are. I think it is unethical to post those pictures on a news site, but it is completely ethical to post the pictures in a place where people who are in the position to help can help.
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