Kid Rock feat. Sheryl Crow

I'm going to be totally honest and tell you that in my personal life and my life as a journalist, I have never really analyzed what pictures I think should and should not go into newspapers. So a lot of what I am going to say is coming from my gut.

As for the first set of pictures we analyzed in class that go in order to portray a man committing suicide, I have mixed feelings. Before we came to class today and learned that there was video of the suicide plastered all over the news, I would have said do not print those pictures. I just don't think a Joe Shmo who picks up the paper in the morning will better understand the situation by seeing a set of pictures. I think elaborate, but concise writing can do it justice.

But after class, I started thinking that to stay competitive, a newspaper should probably use one of the photos, because now that Joe Shmo has seen the story on the news, he probably expects to see an illistration of it the next morning.

As for the photo with the dog, I have absolutly no problem puting that in my paper. I love dogs in general and I love my dog, but if there's a good story behind it, it's in my paper. I think it was tasteful, and it had nothing that rubbed me the wrong way.

Now the picture with the dead child on the other hand definetly rubbed me the wrong way. There are very few circumstances, if any, that I would want a dead child's face in my newspaper. I think it's disrespectful, and really, the reader doesn't gain anything from seeing the face of the deceased. It's really none of our business. Leave their family alone unless they specifically grant permission for the photo to run. I don't want paparazzi pictures in my paper.

My opinion of the dead person in the news building is the exact same. Plain and simple, I don't want a dead face in my paper. How about just taking a picture of the scene with bullet holes and perhaps blood. No faces, no disrespect.

Now the kid with the bar through his face, to me, is something out of Ripley's Believe It Or Not. Unless they are planning on running some public announcement about parents watching their children more carefully, or how you shouldn't jump metal fences with spikes on them, I just see no newsworthyness. And yes I just used that word. I feel like that is a picture you would find on a website of rediculous pictures. It should be the joke at the end of a safety video or something, not in my newspaper.

Now the picture that I thought the most about is the one with the women being groped in Seattle. My first reaction to that photo was horrer and anger at those idiots surrounding her. So that part of me wanted the picture on the front of every paper with her face blurred out and every one of those guy's faces kept in. That way the whole world can see how much of a low-life each of those people are. I wouldn't even mind if they got denied from a job or scholarship because of it. In fact, I would welcome it.

But then there's the rational side of me that says, you can't post that picture because it is a sexual assault. It's not fair to the woman because they couldn't reach her to ask permission, and it's also not fair to other women who have been assaulted that might pick up the paper.

But it still pisses me off that those guys don't get the embarrassment and shame of seeing their faces on every paper across America. But I guess I'll settle for their jail time.


B