News organizations across North America had to consider “how much is too much” Wednesday when deciding how much, if any, of a cell phone video showing the brutal ambush of two journalists to show.
The New York Daily News decided to publish three screenshots of the video reportedly shot by Vester Lee Flanagan, on the front page of its newspaper on Wednesday morning.
One of the three stills was captured the moment the trigger was pulled, sparking the muzzle flash. In the next still, Alison Parker, the reporter murdered while on the job, is seen reeling with her eyes on the camera.
The newspaper posted a photo of its front page on Twitter late Tuesday evening, writing “an early look at tomorrow’s front page… EXECUTED ON LIVE TV.”
The New York Post made a similar decision, showing a still from the video prior to the gunman pulling the trigger. Over a dozen other newspapers across Canada and the United States made the same decision – though some were below the fold.
Many news organizations, including Global News, made different decisions to show only stills from the video without the gun, or not show it at all.
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While the New York Daily News newspaper wasn’t the only newspaper to show varying stills from the video, it was widely condemned for showing the images.
But not everyone was outraged. Justin Fenton, a crime reporter for the Baltimore Sun wrote on Twitter that the images were “frightening but not gory.”
“Personally… covering gun violence daily,” he wrote. “I don’t think the words convey the horror the way these images do.”
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The cell phone video reportedly filmed by Flanagan was one of two videos of the shooting which circulated online following the shooting. The first, which many people were subjected to due to Facebook’s auto-play feature, was filmed by one of the victims himself.
Newspapers, in contrast, have a choice of whether to show their readers the images and frequently, according to a journalism professor, news organizations tend to push the boundaries.
“I think that part of the problem is that inside the newsroom culture, there’s a certain unacknowledged macho quality – how bold can we be before someone slaps us on the wrist?” Jeffrey Dvorkin, a University of Toronto professor and former head of CBC-Radio said.
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But news organizations also have to answer a fundamental question he said: does publishing these images serve their audience? In most cases, he said, publishing graphic images and videos doesn’t add value to the story.
“I tell my students that they should think about who these images are serving, are they serving the ratings? Probably. Are they serving the audience? Maybe not so much.”
However Lisa Taylor, a journalism professor at Ryerson University, said news organization can, and many times did during coverage of Wednesday’s shooting, find a balance.
“Working around the moment of shooting, it seems to be the wisest course of action. We should not show shocking, or offensive video gratuitously,” Taylor said.
“Sometimes we have to show it to communicate a greater truth.”
The second video of Wednesday’s shooting was shot from the killer’s perspective – a much more brutally honest view of the incident.
“There’s a great degree of insight that you get… you get how cold and how calculating it is,” she said. “I think I get the full horror of the situation without seeing the moment of impact.”
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