HORROR PICTURES IN ‘SWAZI NEWS’

The Swazi News made a bad error of judgement when it published two pictures of dead bodies on its front page this week.

The pictures accompanied a report of a traffic accident in which a kombi (small bus) and a car were in collision.

The first picture showed a close up of the dead body of the driver, dead at the wheel of his car. The second picture showed a dead body of a woman on the ground with blood coming from a head wound.

The newspaper reported that the woman had been thrown through the windscreen of the kombi and ‘crashed head-on on the tarmac. She died on the spot.’

The Swazi News (21 June 2008) published more pictures of the accident inside the paper, including the same picture as appeared on the front page of the dead man on page 2 and another view of the dead woman on page 9.

(I noticed that the Weekend Observer, which also covered the traffic accident and published photographs, did not use any of dead bodies.)

There are a number of reasons why it was wrong of the Swazi News to publish the pictures.

First, I doubt if the motives of the Swazi News were pure. The pictures were clearly displayed on the front page and could be seen by passers by at the newsstands and supermarkets where the newspaper is sold. There was an obvious attempt to use these pictures to catch the eye of people who may not have intended to buy the paper. Once hooked, the passer-by purchases the paper.

That’s a pretty cynical move by the Swazi News. But what about the rest of us who are innocently out about town and are confronted by the gruesome pictures? Why should we be forced into seeing the Swazi News photographs? It is almost impossible not to see the photographs even if you don’t want to. Also, what about children who may innocently see them? What effect will it have on them?

The lurid attraction of the photos in selling more copies must have been important to the Swazi News because otherwise there was no need to publish the same picture of the man in the car on both page one (to increase sales) and on page 3 (to illustrate the story).

Another point to consider (no matter where in the newspaper the photographs were published) is the actual ‘news value’ of the photographs. What does showing two pictures of a woman with her head bashed in and blood pouring onto the tarmac add to the story? The obvious answer is that the pictures ‘show it as it is’. This accident happened in a public place and two people were violently killed and the public should be told.

Well up to a point, yes. But there are plenty of things going on in Swaziland that the public should be told about but remain hidden by the newspapers.

So, we must conclude that the pictures were considered to have some kind of ‘dramatic value’. Although they are horrific pictures, I’m not so sure that they are ‘dramatic’. Both pictures are static (the bodies are after all dead) and show nothing in action. They are ‘shocking’ certainly, but not dramatic.

There is one other factor that the Swazi News has ignored: intrusion into private grief. The people in the photographs are local. There is every possibility that the families and friends of the deceased will see the pictures splashed all over the newspaper. What do you think they would feel when they see them? What would you feel if it were your husband, father or brother in the picture?

Newspapers in Swaziland do no shy away from publishing shocking photographs. The ones in the Swazi News were the most extreme pictures to be published recently, but it is not uncommon to see pictures of people who are horribly disfigured by disease or through accident. Dead bodies have also been published before.

Media academic Johan Retief in his book Media Ethics (published by Oxford University Press) says that publishing gruesome pictures in newspapers can actually harm the readers by inflicting lasting pain and suffering on them – ‘this especially concerns pictures of tragedy, suffering, and grief – the stuff that fills every newspaper – such as accidents, rape, murder, fires, natural disasters, violence and war.’

Readers are thought to linger longer over gruesome pictures while ignoring other parts of the newspaper.

Retief says that editors often argue that by graphically publicising gruesome events such as traffic accidents, newspapers help to prevent further incidents of the same kind happening in the future (or at least help to limit them).

But he points out that for years newspapers have run pictures of traffic accidents ‘under the pretext that such photos would somehow let motorists know what awaits them should they become careless behind the wheel’.

But he concludes that even though gruesome photos of accidents are published, there is no evidence to demonstrate that publishing such photos has any effect on car accidents.

Retief wasn’t thinking about Swaziland when he made those observations, but it is clear that traffic accidents form a staple part of all newspaper coverage in the kingdom. Hardly a week goes by without a picture of a mangled vehicle (and sometimes worse) appearing on the front pages and they seem to have no impact on the standard of driving in Swaziland, which remains appallingly bad.

Retief offers a checklist for photographers and editors to consider before publishing a photograph. Here is an extract from that list.

- What is the news value of the photograph?
- What is the motivation for publishing the photo?
- Who will be offended? Does such offence outweigh the value of presenting the image?
- How would I react if I were in the photo?
- Are there any alternative ways to present the information to minimise harm while still telling the story in a clear way?
- Are you able to justify you action?