On June 8, one of the best-known photos ever taken turned fifty, the one in which Kim Phúc, a nine-year-old Vietnamese girl, runs naked towards the lens of Nick Ut, an Associated Press photographer, after being hit by napalm dropped by US bombers. Nick Ut’s photo (whose story was told by the photographer himself in an article published in the Washington Post) helped further reduce American public support for the Vietnam War.
Other photos had even stronger effects. That of the coffin opened at the funeral of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old black boy kidnapped, tortured and killed in 1955 in Mississippi, shocked the country and strengthened the civil rights movement.
In recent days in the United States there has been a lot of talk about these and other photographs, and an old debate has reopened on the possibility of using some strong images, possibly even violent, to mobilize public opinion on certain issues and persuade politicians to take action. After the massacre at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, in which 19 children died on May 24, some commentators argued that the media should start showing pictures of the children killed, so that gun owners and Republican politicians understand the true consequences of the uncontrolled spread of weapons.
Edward Wasserman, a professor of journalism at Berkeley University, criticized the discretion of journalists not only on the victims but also on the killers: “In both cases, moderation risks making matters worse. The anonymization of the killers, which does not seem to have discouraged other killers, leads people to conclude that the massacres are similar to natural disasters, that is, inevitable and unpredictable events that humans cannot understand or prevent. Deciding not to publish the photos of the massacre, the event is represented through the sweet and dark images of pain, of makeshift shrines built with toys and of parents holding candles and crying over the photos of their children, still alive and smiling. The media speak of dignity and consolation. A community is in mourning. Journalists are witnesses of this. Things will go well again ”.
John Temple, who was editor of Rocky Mountain News at the time of the Littleton Columbine massacre, disagrees. First, he explains, there is a real problem with accessing the crime scene. “To capture the kind of images that some would like to see published, photojournalists would need to be allowed to enter the scene – which is unthinkable for many reasons, in my experience – or to arrive at the scene of a shooting before the police. This rarely happens ”.
Second, the publication of images of the mangled bodies of children would have counterproductive effects: “The Columbine massacre seems to have broken down a barrier for other potential massacres. I fear that making public photos of killed children would motivate other killers to see how much damage they can cause, normalize unthinkable violence, and be used hatefully against victims’ families or as a threat to others. Rather, we need to publish photographs that do not lead people to look away but that capture it “. Furthermore, at a time when conspiracy theories are gaining momentum, it is likely that many people would question the authenticity of those images, as recently also happened with the Russian massacres in Ukraine.
In the end, explains Meaghan Looram, director of photography for the New York Times in an article published in the 1464 issue of Internazionale, newspapers must find a balance: “On the one hand, there are the journalistic value of an image and the usefulness for our readers, on the other hand we must ask ourselves if the photo damages the dignity of the victim or can bring further suffering to the family or loved ones of the person portrayed ”. These evaluations in most cases lead journalists and photoeditors not to publish any violent images.