Drizzt
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Crime-scene photo unsettling to some
01/25/2003
By JACQUIELYNN FLOYD / The Dallas Morning News
The large photograph that appeared in Friday's paper – the trade argot is "centerpiece art" – gave rise to a lot of discussion by virtue of having had a dead person in it.
The picture was taken outside a Far North Dallas home, where a resident had shot and killed two intruders who tried to break in early Thursday. One of the apparent burglars died in the apartment, and the other collapsed and died outside.
A photographer for The Dallas Morning News captured what is actually a fairly routine crime-scene scenario. A Dallas Police Department spokesman stands in the front yard, addressing the knot of reporters gathered there. A couple of uniformed officers stand in the background. Over the spokesman's left shoulder, in the distance, the body of the second burglar lies facedown next to a sidewalk.
In this case, the medical examiner's representatives had not yet arrived to record their observations, so the body had not yet been covered with the discreet sheet that is usually draped over corpses in news photographs.
People are surely pretty used to seeing news pictures or film footage of covered-up bodies being wheeled away on gurneys, but a photo of an uncovered dead guy in the spot where he fell is certainly a departure from the norm.
And it caused a lot of debate, both inside the newsroom and out, which I think is probably a useful thing. Some found the photo shocking, not because it was gory or graphic (it wasn't), but because it so starkly depicted the discordant reality of violent death in an otherwise ordinary setting.
I wasn't especially shocked, but then, I have been to crime scenes. They usually involve a lot of standing around and waiting for somebody to tell you what's going on.
That isn't to say I didn't go a little rubber-kneed the first few times I saw a body not at a funeral home. It is the realization – that person is actually dead – that shakes you up a little, and that I think struck a lot of people who saw Friday's photograph.
The News, as well as television stations that ran footage of the scene, took some heat over the decision to show the body.
Editors for DallasNews.com, the web site of The Dallas Morning News, decided Friday to crop the body out of the photo before posting it online. Saturday, the paper's decision to run this photo with the dead person in it has become the focus of much discussion.
"If that's 'cutting edge' journalism, then I'm out!" one irate reader e-mailed several members of our staff. Even one editor in our newsroom said he "couldn't stand to look" at the photograph because he knew the person lying in the background was dead.
Others, though, said they saw little departure from the now-routine shrouded-corpse-on-the-gurney photos. Some said they're more distressed by graphic written descriptions of crimes or injuries. Some are so hard-boiled they could probably look at autopsy pictures over their morning oatmeal. Everybody's threshold for the offensive or the prurient is different.
Perhaps I am out of line with the prevailing sentiment, but in truth I would have been a lot less comfortable had the photo shown an innocent victim of an accident or a homicide.
A picture of a lone shoe at the scene of a plane crash can make me weepy. Photos of hollow-eyed kids and even skinny dogs in the streets of cities wrecked by war and poverty sometimes haunt my imagination. Even the grainy battlefield pictures of slain Civil War soldiers convey a terrible sense of loss and tragedy after nearly a century and a half.
But, to me, a distant and not particularly graphic picture of a dead burglar – albeit an unconvicted one – isn't especially unsettling.
I'm not saying burglars deserve to be shot. But I do think this particular photo offers a grim, realistic glimpse of the damage crime and criminals create in our city every day.
In this case, the photo showed what any Far North Dallas passer-by would have seen.
It's not a photo from Tel Aviv or the West Bank. It's not a war zone or a dangerous, rundown neighborhood plagued by street gangs and crack houses.
It's an ordinary apartment house with a tree by the front walk, with two cars and a tricycle visible in the open garage.
Except for the police officers in the yard and the dead guy in the flower bed, it's a home and a neighborhood where any of us might live.
And that, maybe, is the part that's really so shocking.
http://www.dallasnews.com/localnews/columnists/jfloyd/stories/012503dnmetfloyd.c43d.html
I didn't post this with the other article about the actual shooting, because I felt that this was a subject all of it's own. Do you think these type of photos serve as a warning, or do they simply numb us to events?
01/25/2003
By JACQUIELYNN FLOYD / The Dallas Morning News
The large photograph that appeared in Friday's paper – the trade argot is "centerpiece art" – gave rise to a lot of discussion by virtue of having had a dead person in it.
The picture was taken outside a Far North Dallas home, where a resident had shot and killed two intruders who tried to break in early Thursday. One of the apparent burglars died in the apartment, and the other collapsed and died outside.
A photographer for The Dallas Morning News captured what is actually a fairly routine crime-scene scenario. A Dallas Police Department spokesman stands in the front yard, addressing the knot of reporters gathered there. A couple of uniformed officers stand in the background. Over the spokesman's left shoulder, in the distance, the body of the second burglar lies facedown next to a sidewalk.
In this case, the medical examiner's representatives had not yet arrived to record their observations, so the body had not yet been covered with the discreet sheet that is usually draped over corpses in news photographs.
People are surely pretty used to seeing news pictures or film footage of covered-up bodies being wheeled away on gurneys, but a photo of an uncovered dead guy in the spot where he fell is certainly a departure from the norm.
And it caused a lot of debate, both inside the newsroom and out, which I think is probably a useful thing. Some found the photo shocking, not because it was gory or graphic (it wasn't), but because it so starkly depicted the discordant reality of violent death in an otherwise ordinary setting.
I wasn't especially shocked, but then, I have been to crime scenes. They usually involve a lot of standing around and waiting for somebody to tell you what's going on.
That isn't to say I didn't go a little rubber-kneed the first few times I saw a body not at a funeral home. It is the realization – that person is actually dead – that shakes you up a little, and that I think struck a lot of people who saw Friday's photograph.
The News, as well as television stations that ran footage of the scene, took some heat over the decision to show the body.
Editors for DallasNews.com, the web site of The Dallas Morning News, decided Friday to crop the body out of the photo before posting it online. Saturday, the paper's decision to run this photo with the dead person in it has become the focus of much discussion.
"If that's 'cutting edge' journalism, then I'm out!" one irate reader e-mailed several members of our staff. Even one editor in our newsroom said he "couldn't stand to look" at the photograph because he knew the person lying in the background was dead.
Others, though, said they saw little departure from the now-routine shrouded-corpse-on-the-gurney photos. Some said they're more distressed by graphic written descriptions of crimes or injuries. Some are so hard-boiled they could probably look at autopsy pictures over their morning oatmeal. Everybody's threshold for the offensive or the prurient is different.
Perhaps I am out of line with the prevailing sentiment, but in truth I would have been a lot less comfortable had the photo shown an innocent victim of an accident or a homicide.
A picture of a lone shoe at the scene of a plane crash can make me weepy. Photos of hollow-eyed kids and even skinny dogs in the streets of cities wrecked by war and poverty sometimes haunt my imagination. Even the grainy battlefield pictures of slain Civil War soldiers convey a terrible sense of loss and tragedy after nearly a century and a half.
But, to me, a distant and not particularly graphic picture of a dead burglar – albeit an unconvicted one – isn't especially unsettling.
I'm not saying burglars deserve to be shot. But I do think this particular photo offers a grim, realistic glimpse of the damage crime and criminals create in our city every day.
In this case, the photo showed what any Far North Dallas passer-by would have seen.
It's not a photo from Tel Aviv or the West Bank. It's not a war zone or a dangerous, rundown neighborhood plagued by street gangs and crack houses.
It's an ordinary apartment house with a tree by the front walk, with two cars and a tricycle visible in the open garage.
Except for the police officers in the yard and the dead guy in the flower bed, it's a home and a neighborhood where any of us might live.
And that, maybe, is the part that's really so shocking.
http://www.dallasnews.com/localnews/columnists/jfloyd/stories/012503dnmetfloyd.c43d.html
I didn't post this with the other article about the actual shooting, because I felt that this was a subject all of it's own. Do you think these type of photos serve as a warning, or do they simply numb us to events?
