The Image Question
I wondered about this when I logged on to CBSNews.com last night, and saw the photo above posted prominently with the top story on the homepage – essentially the first thing a reader would see on the site. It's believed to be an image of the body of Khamis Hameed al-Obeidi, a lawyer who represented Saddam Hussein, who was killed yesterday in Baghdad. At TVNewser, blogger Brian Stelter noticed the photo as well: "This was the graphic photo at the top of CBSNews.com Wednesday evening," he wrote, asking, "Are the networks beginning to show more gore from Iraq?"
I'm not sure that CBSNews.com posting the photo says anything about networks showing more gore from Iraq, but it does raise some questions about how news Web sites handle this kind of content.
According to Michael Sims, director of news and operations for CBSNews.com, the photo was in the lead position on the homepage for about three hours last night starting at about or shortly after 6:30 p.m.
"Our evening team debated use of the photo (as we do all graphic images) and decided that it was not inappropriate for the home page," Sims told me in an e-mail.
"In general, we ask that our editors be sensitive about graphic photos that hit a user without the user being forewarned," wrote Sims. "We don't want to sugarcoat the news, but we also don't want to offend our audience, driving them to skip an important story entirely."
There are obviously a lot of editorial judgment issues at play here. News of al-Obeidi's death – which was brutal, he was "found riddled with bullets on a street" according to CBSNews.com – was a notable story. Given the nature of his death, the photo is certainly part of that story. Considering that, would not including the photo prominently have diminished the story's impact? At the same time, there are legitimate reasons to warn people before showing graphic images. If people are typically warned about such images on television, should a news Web site follow the same rules?