A touch of class
Posted on | August 17, 2007 | 52 Comments
The online edition of today’s Irish Independent carries a large picture of the family of that young lad who was killed while on holidays in Spain. The family of the young lad at his funeral.
It shows his parents, trying to hold it together, and what I imagine is his sister with her face contorted with grief and pain comforting another young girl (perhaps another sister, I don’t know).
Now, can anybody tell me why they feel it necessary to plaster a picture of a family’s misery in the pages, both paper and web, of their newspaper? The story itself is tragic enough. 18 year old lad goes to Spain on holiday, gets involved in a row over something and is beaten to death with an iron bar. If you can’t find a way of describing how awful that is in words alone then there’s something wrong with you.
They’ve done it before too. When the wife of golfer Darren Clarke died from cancer they showed a picture of Clarke with his two highly distraught young sons at the funeral. In my mind that was low, low, low but to try and look at it objectively Darren Clarke is a very famous man and his wife’s illness was in the public domain for a long time.
The family of Derek Cumiskey though have been thrust unwillingly into the limelight. I know this culture we live in now, where people are quite happy to share the minutae of their lives with anyone (look at Facebook – “Bob Smith is going to the toilet” – “Bob Smith is finishing work then he’s going to get the bus home, have some dinner and then go out and meet some friends in X bar at Y time”), might make it seem like privacy is a thing of the past but surely there are lines you don’t cross.
What happened to privacy? What makes people think it’s ok to take a picture of people weeping and crying at a funeral, for fuck’s sake, and slap it all over the newspapers?
The worst thing is this is so par for the course now that nobody even bats an eyelid when they see it. Newspapers can report on anything, that’s fair enough, but taking photos at a funeral like it’s a day out at the Galway races is just scummy and shouldn’t be allowed.
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52 Responses to “A touch of class”
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August 17th, 2007 @ 9:38 am
Well said Twenty.
August 17th, 2007 @ 9:45 am
So why’d you provide a link to it?
August 17th, 2007 @ 9:48 am
Here here Twenty. It’s no wonder people are miserable the whole time. When I read the headlines on the RTE site its all about stabbings, shootings, funerals, car crashes, suicides and rapes. It’s amazing what sells news these days.
August 17th, 2007 @ 9:53 am
They’ll be trying to interview them next.
“So, this is a really, really sad day for you. How are you holding up?”
There’s no interference like Irish interference.
August 17th, 2007 @ 9:58 am
So why’d you provide a link to it?
Proof.
August 17th, 2007 @ 10:11 am
Agreed. People are FAR too voyeuristic nowadays.
August 17th, 2007 @ 10:43 am
Agreed.
August 17th, 2007 @ 10:49 am
Well leave it to the Indo to print a pic like that. The word “sensitivity” isn’t in their vocabulary. Like the time when their sister paper, the Sindo, dredged up all that shite about the gaurd Aidan McCabe they day he buried his wife and child. Cunts.
August 17th, 2007 @ 11:06 am
Well said Twenty.
August 17th, 2007 @ 11:07 am
A point well made, Twenty. In days of old, there used to be an understanding amongst Press that funerals were not covered pictorially. They seem to have lost sight of this old “honour” system.
August 17th, 2007 @ 11:07 am
a very, very sad picture, and I agree, not one that should be plastered over the web or a paper.
Are there no laws to prevent this?
August 17th, 2007 @ 11:07 am
The Star pulled the same shit when they printed the photo of Joey Dunlop as he lay dying,
then followed it up with the photo of some poor bloke’s corpse floating facedown in the Liffey.
Media types are ghouls making their living off other peoples misery,
But we’re the cunts who buy the papers
August 17th, 2007 @ 11:10 am
Twenty, completely agree.
The problem is this type of thing sells.
The lines of delineation between Privacy and Freedom of expression are ever blurring.
I think your reference to Facebook is interesting. Out of all of the on-line ‘quango’s’ Facebook actually does provide a level of access and control that we can live with. Bebo, Myspace etc. are all google’able and becoming more used by the less ethical in society.
In relation to Privacy and Freedom of Expression, per the theme of the post, it seems we have become more American in our ‘consumer’ media approaches to broadcasting tragedy. Media and spin is the order of the day.
The question should be: Do people really want to see this? – No is the answer in the minds of most ‘right thinking people in society’.
Does it: Shock, Offend and Disturb? – Yes.
Is it necessary? – No.
We have control over this type of thing but don’t generally use it.
Imagine having to be a media hack and door-stop a funeral? What extreme job satisfaction would that bring.
‘Touch of Class’ – Nothing classy about it at all.
August 17th, 2007 @ 11:14 am
I think its just a morbid fascination with other peoples misery. Why do people rubber neck at car crashes etc? s’just human nature.
August 17th, 2007 @ 11:26 am
sheepworrier, the Irish (which I am) seem to have a certain perchant for it though. I wonder is it anything to do with the 800 years!?
August 17th, 2007 @ 11:32 am
Jonesy, Nah, it’s an international concept. Just ask the “papps” who took pics of Diana in the Parisian tunnel..
August 17th, 2007 @ 11:50 am
Twenty Major is the voice of common sense.
August 17th, 2007 @ 11:59 am
Twenty, I have the wine induced fear of god in my head – Please post something to lift me out of my misery!! Just any old throwaway line about snails being boggly eyed cunts or something like that… please?
August 17th, 2007 @ 12:18 pm
I totally agree with you Twenty. People who mourn need privacy and space in which to do so. Perhaps this needs to be pointed out in strong terms to the news hounds?
August 17th, 2007 @ 12:44 pm
I see where youre comin from Jonesy, but thats more to do with wallowing in our past than the macbre fascination with loss and suffering.
Maybe we’re so interested because (Twenty aside) we’re just empathetic creatures?
August 17th, 2007 @ 1:25 pm
Its the independent – what do you expect ? real news ??
August 17th, 2007 @ 1:30 pm
Agreed Twenty. But who reads that rag thses days.
I can’t say I know any Indo readers. Just a load of right wing loons getting off on Kevin Myers and Eoin Haris I guess.
August 17th, 2007 @ 1:31 pm
They did the same thing with Mary Harney at her mother’s funeral. It’s disgusting. But most people hoover up this stuff. I’m not sure people know the rules of the game: there is an NUJ code of conduct, and one of its points protects against filth like this. Journalists just trundle along, not one says Stop, because we are a forward-thinking, knowledge-based economy, competition equals progress and justification for all our depraved actions kind of people now.
August 17th, 2007 @ 1:44 pm
Jonsey,what is it with the Irish hang-up about 800 years? What have you got against the Normans – you know, the French people who invaded Ireland 800 years ago?
August 17th, 2007 @ 2:21 pm
well said Twenty.
August 17th, 2007 @ 2:23 pm
Have to wonder Fourth Former – if they had come with civiisation a thousand years earlier Ireland would probably rule the world by now!
August 17th, 2007 @ 2:30 pm
Fair play to twenty, for calling a cunt a cunt.
When I was in college, some of the lads
where doing Journalism, each given an assignment,
one of the girls got the assignment, to attend the funeral of a bank robber that had just been killed by the guards. Take pictures, and try and get an interview, preferable in the family home.
Now whatever we all think about a bank robber, fair enough, but to intrude, to bully your way in with a fake gesture of sympathy, into a family’s grief, into their home, is not on, and the journalists as people know this. But their excuse is, sure, some other cunt will do it, if they don’t get in first.
A cunt is a cunt, and yer wan fitted the bill.
This time, why is there no name with this piece, who wrote this one up.
August 17th, 2007 @ 2:36 pm
“But we’re the cunts who buy the papers”
You got it in one scorchio. It’s a pretty grubby pic, and I’d be pissed off if my own family were depicted thus.
But as a society, we’re obsessed with peeking and prying, seeing things we never had an opportunity to see before.
The Indo is merely responding to this demand, and of course trying to sell papers.
There’s a new Press Council and Press Ombudsman being installed, they might try and curtail this sort of thing – but I doubt they’ll manage it.
August 17th, 2007 @ 2:56 pm
Is there a written code of conduct for newspapers, anyone?
August 17th, 2007 @ 2:59 pm
I would not agree with a new Press Council and Press Ombudsman, that’s just obeying jackboot Herr McDowell.
No, whoever got paid for this, they should stand up,
include their name and photo, stand by this shit, and
receive the just criticism from the people who know
them
Its not a blog, its a National Paper. The cunt should not be anonymous in this case.
August 17th, 2007 @ 4:03 pm
It’s the old hack adage “if it bleeds, it leads”. This includes emotional haemorrhaging too. And we do continue to buy those papers even if they are tasteless and insensitive… Write to the editors and let them know they are heartless swine making a cheap sales ploy…
August 17th, 2007 @ 5:39 pm
Yes it does not really do anything positive and I cant see any reason behind the publishing the picture. Very sad Family occassion and they deserve privacy.
August 17th, 2007 @ 5:46 pm
There is a new ‘code of practice for newspapers and periodicals’, it covers stuff like truth & accuracy, distinguishing fact and comment, privacy, protection of source, kids, incitement to hatred, and other funky stuff.
Basically, it’s designed to enable ordinary Joe Wanklagers to complain about, oh let’s see, pictures of grieving families, without having to go to court to do so. That’s as I understand it.
August 17th, 2007 @ 5:47 pm
http://www.nuj.org.uk/inner.php?docid=59
that code for all those at the back
The NUJ’s Code of Conduct has set out the main principles of British and Irish journalism since 1936, it was updated at ADM 2007.
Members of the National Union of Journalists are expected to abide by the following professional principles:
A journalist
1. At all times upholds and defends the principle of media freedom, the right of freedom of expression and the right of the public to be informed
2. Strives to ensure that information disseminated is honestly conveyed, accurate and fair
3. Does her/his utmost to correct harmful inaccuracies
4. Differentiates between fact and opinion
5. Obtains material by honest, straightforward and open means, with the exception of investigations that are both overwhelmingly in the public interest and which involve evidence that cannot be obtained by straightforward means
6. Does nothing to intrude into anybody’s private life, grief or distress unless justified by overriding consideration of the public interest
7. Protects the identity of sources who supply information in confidence and material gathered in the course of her/his work
8. Resists threats or any other inducements to influence, distort or suppress information
9. Takes no unfair personal advantage of information gained in the course of her/his duties before the information is public knowledge
10. Produces no material likely to lead to hatred or discrimination on the grounds of a person’s age, gender, race, colour, creed, legal status, disability, marital status, or sexual orientation
11. Does not by way of statement, voice or appearance endorse by advertisement any commercial product or service save for the promotion of her/his own work or of the medium by which she/he is employed
12. Avoids plagiarism.
August 17th, 2007 @ 6:17 pm
There was a woman on Joe Duffy on Wednesday – (I am unemployed) – who was giving out about those scum in the ‘Sunday World’. Her daughter was raped and murdered by a serial sex offender who alleged, with court privelege, that she was a prostitute. Then the ‘World’ found out that this filth is new best mates with Joe O’Reilly and brought up the whole case again for the grieving mother. But the worst part was that they repeated the rapist’s allegations and printed a photograph of the body of the girl, which the mother had never seen, and tagged it with ‘Gruesome’. What is the point of that shit?
August 17th, 2007 @ 9:59 pm
dasdad
August 17th, 2007 @ 10:07 pm
You fucking whiners make me sick with all yer hand-wringing about the media. Twenty, do you seek the permission of anyone who you write about on your site? Do you fuck! And that’s the way it should be, unless its libellous.
It was a perfectly legitimate story and a perfectly legitimate photo. The violent death of an Irishman is a story legitimately in the public interest. The grief of the family is a part of that story. Why spend thousands of word writing about someone’s grief when there it is there, in one picture? No amount of paragraphs could have described it better.
All this shite about how the media shouldn’t be let do this, and the media shouldn’t be let do that. Listen to yourselves whining! It’s pathetic. If your words became reality you’d be living in a dictatorship.
August 18th, 2007 @ 1:09 am
“Legitimately in the public interest” me bollix.
It filled a front page when the cunts have nothing else to write about, that’s all.
August 18th, 2007 @ 1:31 am
Horsebox needs a “Horsebox” shoved up his/her arse…
The funeral and a families grief in public interest…I don’t think so. I am one of the “public” who interest you ineptly try to champion as the reason for this photo. A column about it would have been fine, but a picture just takes the piss and makes what should have been a private family/friend affair shoved in peoples faces. You don’t have to buy that indo rag to see the pic, it’s huge!
If, and I am stretching it here, the guy was killed while walking in broad daylight, in Ireland somewhere, by 4 guys with iron bars who left him there to die, maybe then, the grief might emphasize the problems with crime in this country and the need for something to be done…
Actually, not even then. Whoever took the pic is a cunt, and it’s a pity because I would have kicked the shit out of anybody with a zoom lens if I was there.
August 18th, 2007 @ 2:58 am
cunts, end of….
August 18th, 2007 @ 9:04 am
“The grief of the family is a part of that story. Why spend thousands of word writing about someone’s grief when there it is there, in one picture? No amount of paragraphs could have described it better.”
Spoken like a true journalist. Most people can understand the word grief just as most people can figure out for themselves a family might grieve after the death of a loved one. Shoving a camera in their face to capture their pain is overkill and a shoddy tactic.
August 18th, 2007 @ 1:57 pm
Perhaps a few smashed cameras would help stop the practice of sensationalising grief.
August 18th, 2007 @ 3:23 pm
smashing camera’s would take away the freedom of the press……
to be obnoxious lying propganda spreading cunts
August 18th, 2007 @ 6:13 pm
Em.. sorry for any rash words earlier,
but, I still think a Herr McDowell (or his like, who took over afterwards)control of the press is wrong,
The Press should have space to express itself, but
still know the fucking difference between right and wrong.
This shit is wrong, who wrote it, who photographed it,they should be told so, that they are indeed cunts.
They don’t help the family, just themselves.
August 19th, 2007 @ 1:25 am
Since you evoke “Herr McDowell (or his like, who took over afterwards”, I presume, you feckless eejit, that you don’t know which particular Nat-zee occupied McDowell’s position, nor indeed what that position actually is?
The kind of cunts that “needed” protecting under the terms of that Act were already protected by ranks of copiously well-paid S.C. rottweilers. The difference here is that it’s just an ordinary family (whatever that is?) who are unlikely to sue.
August 19th, 2007 @ 1:38 am
And kicking the shit out of a camera (or cameraman) is NOT what will turn the tide, brothers, sisters… \sheesh!
August 19th, 2007 @ 10:11 am
It’s not just an Irish thing….we have the same crap going on here in Canada…..what I don’t understand are the people who choose to be interviewed or photographed within days, sometimes hours it seems, of losing a ‘loved one’ tragically………maybe they’re in shock, I don’t know, but it’s gruesome to me, I turn the news off as soon as there’s an intro about that kind of story……though I have noticed a very recent phenomenon of the media actually saying they will not ‘intrude on the family at this time’…….and the newspapers here……don’t even bother to purchase them or read them anymore…..as for the idea that it wouldn’t be printed/written/shown if the public didn’t want it…………if it weren’t printed/written/shown, would the public demand it?
August 19th, 2007 @ 10:07 pm
Couple of general points here as a former daily news journalist (who quit because of precisely this kind of sensationalist news coverage): Firstly, the pic looks like it was taken in the street and that, while tasteless, I’ll admit, is perfectly legal.
Secondly, if you check the circulation figures of newspapers carrying bad news on page 1, you’ll find that sales improve in inverse proportion to the good news level. The general public lap bad news up, there’s no getting away form it. The papers are just giving the public what it wants. On a personal level, and with this case particularly, I wouldn’t have covered it. I’d have just gone as far as reporting that the kid was killed and left it at that.
August 20th, 2007 @ 2:23 am
I can beat that one – We had a fire in the town early last week and all ‘cept the 23 year old son managed to get out. The cries of the mother to the son and his cries back as the house went up will haunt the street for ever.
Friday morning, 3 days later, the front page photo is the mother and father in the depths of grief in the back of the ambulance as the house burnt.
Local papers – cunts. Nothing is sacred. The rotten thing is the paper is a free giveaway twice a week so it’s not as though they were trying to sell copy.
I’ll say it again . Cunts.
August 20th, 2007 @ 11:01 am
That wannabe broadsheet is not fit for a bum’s arse. The paper is a shambles and you would only need to look back to the Liam Lawler incident to see what a pack of story hungry animals they really are. The weekly sport has better journalism!
August 21st, 2007 @ 6:57 pm
“unless justified by overriding consideration of the public interest” – what interests the public is not necessarily in the public interest. Needless to say the tabloids (and the Indo and Sindo are just another form of red top) don’t make that distinction.
August 21st, 2007 @ 11:40 pm
Nope, I wouldn’t buy those papers. Private grief isn’t news, isn’t an angle. Pity people don’t have the cop-on to boycott that paper for the rest of the week, that’d soon stop that practice.
Do people send in pictures of themselves with tears rolling down their faces, instead of an obituary?
Of course not, we can read, and if we knew the person involved, we’d be there at the funeral, not behind a camera lens.