Distance breeds indifference. The further we are from a major tragedy and the less intensely our own families and communities feel its shock and reverberations, the higher our threshold for accounts of the suffering and the weaker our sense of restraint in airing details.
Perhaps not a universal or inevitable phenomenon, still I think most people recognise it. Most journalists know it. Their empathy, often strong personally, can wrestle with their professional commitment.
When a terrible event happens – terrorist attack, natural disaster, human-caused accident with many casualties, mass shooting – the first duty of journalism is to inform, to seek causes, reflect emotions and try to ensure that lessons are collectively learned. That often means reporting details and using images of actual or clearly implied suffering.
But how much, and how soon? Journalists have a job to do, but so do emergency services, investigators, counsellors, coroners, elected leaders and others. Which public disclosures are likely to do more harm than good?
These are issues with which editors regularly grapple. Most ethics codes require discretion and sensitivity in cases involving grief or shock, but every situation needs judgments in particular circumstances. The task is harder now because publishing online shrinks distance, expands audiences and reduces time for the discussion and reflection essential to ethical decision-making. Social media provides far more material to sift as survivors, witnesses and their personal networks react. Social media is also a tool for journalists to seek reactions from those closely affected by tragedy.
Unlike the printed newspaper, with its circulation area limited to a locality, a region or at most a country, journalism organisations with big online presences such as the Guardian serve both the community affected by a tragedy and a global audience remote from it.
I watched the Guardian’s editors and journalists work through such challenges in the first three sombre days after the Manchester bombing, and I believe they have served readers well. The images chosen for publication conveyed the initial trauma, the community grief and the responses of authorities and others, but without the graphic, hyperbolic, fear-stoking coverage of some other UK media.
After every major terrorist act, commentators, some of whom are expert, advise that media coverage can serve terrorists’ purposes unless handled with care. I have witnessed Guardian editors absorb and implement the advice and at the same time serve their audience. Reasonable people can differ about particular decisions, but overall I believe that in the first three days the Guardian balanced, skilfully and under pressure, necessary consideration for the community most affected – Manchester, birthplace of the Guardian – and the imperative to find news and tell it.
Some readers were upset by the decision to publish on the front page of the paper and the website the leaked image of what is reported to be the bomb’s detonator lying amid blood smear on the floor, where forensics teams presumably photographed it.
Wrote one reader: “I’ve seen a few things before and it really touched those nerves. I appreciate that you often include graphic images in your articles where appropriate, and I commend you for it, but it usually follows a warning.”
The power of imagery cannot easily be muted when chosen for the front page, but otherwise, as the reader notes, warnings are a valuable device for balancing disclosure and discretion. On TV through brief delay, and online by requiring a decision to click or scroll, warnings give the audience – including, crucially, those with particular vulnerability – a choice, but allow others to be informed.
The detonator image was among several leaked by presumably US sources to the New York Times after UK agencies shared them with US counterparts. The bomber’s name was also leaked to US media. These disclosures followed the bombing with unusual speed, during an investigation still young.
In my view it made no difference, security-wise, that the Guardian – in common with most other media outlets – used the images after the New York Times published them. In our connected world, once the material was online any damage to the investigation was done. The perpetrators, who knew what they had used, quickly learned something of what investigators had found at a scene of destruction where recovery of key items is presumably not guaranteed.
I asked the executive editor of the New York Times, Dean Baquet, whether pre-publication advice from US or UK law enforcement authorities had been sought about the potential for the material to affect the investigation if disclosed. (This sort of consultation is common in security matters; the media does not commit in advance to follow the advice but editors seek it so that they can make informed decisions.) Baquet responded: “I have not heard a strong argument yet for not publishing this information. I do not want to say anything that would reveal our sources, but I will say that we spoke to experts about what they revealed before they were published. And we felt comfortable they were newsworthy and even informative.”
In an email exchange Baquet also said that after publication law enforcement had not asked for the information to be removed.
A recent Unesco paper on terrorism and media observes that the “line between what must be silenced and what must be revealed to the public is not always clear, but the question must constantly be asked, and the authorities’ arguments systematically scrutinised”.
It remains to be clarified how much scrutiny was given by the New York Times to the arguments of the most relevant authorities in the circumstances, the UK police.
It is unarguable that the images were newsworthy and informative. I admire the journalistic instincts and enterprise of the New York Times. The issue here is about timing. Did the public interest in disclosure at that time outweigh the public interest in UK authorities getting as close as possible as fast as possible to those who assisted the bomber?
Unless we learn more about whom the New York Times consulted and what factors the editors weighed, it is not possible to answer. But I wonder whether, for the (presumably) US leaker and the New York Times, distance affected their judgments.