There are two horrible scenes that play in my mind every time I see media coverage of tragedies like those in Oklahoma City, Littleton and Kosovo. Both of these scenes I witnessed on network news broadcasts several years ago, and both come back to me in vivid detail whenever I think about the proper boundaries for photographing victims of crimes and catastrophes.
In December 1988, after New York-bound Pan Am Flight 103 had just exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, several reporters went to JFK International Airport to cover the story. Among the scenes shot and broadcast that night was one of a woman who had just been told her son was aboard the flight. The woman was hysterical. She collapsed and then kicked and wailed, yelling, “My baby!” again and again as others tried to help her to her feet.
Several years later, after the 1994 earthquake in Los Angeles, one broadcast report showed a woman emerging safely from her house, only to see her daughter’s house down the street had vanished. It had fallen into a ravine, killing everyone inside. News photographers captured the woman’s panic as she made the realization. Cameramen followed her as she began running toward the ravine, screaming for her lost family members.
I was sickened by both of these scenes, but also by the journalists who had forced me to witness them, and who had, in a sense, made me a party to their morbid voyeurism. I felt manipulated. I had been taken to a place I did not want to go — inside another person’s most private sphere, at their most awful moment — and there was no way for me to undo it.
As citizens in a free society with an unbridled press, we are routinely confronted with images that test the limits of our compassion and our tolerance. In just one recent issue of the Star Tribune, for example, there were six different stories with photos of grieving or traumatized victims.
As upsetting as these images often are, they are also indispensable. Pictures are the most compelling parts of news narratives. They draw us into stories and make us participants in ways that printed descriptions cannot. Pictures tap into a different plane of experience and emotion, evoking the kind of visceral response that only the best writers can duplicate.
These graphic and often intrusive images are essential tools journalists use to tell the whole truth. But more than that, images of injured victims and sobbing survivors also become part of the process through which communities begin to grieve. By triggering our rage and our compassion they become part of the process through which we avenge and atone for the lives that have been lost.
Therein lies the dilemma. Because the most horrible images are often the most revealing, where should journalists draw the line? When should editors refuse to publish images that may be helpful in the long run even if they are painful in the short run? When are the individual’s private rights outweighed by the interests of society? And when should the journalist’s obligation to tell the truth give way to the subject’s right to be left alone?
These are extremely complicated questions for which news organizations’ responses will always be inadequate. There are simply too many variables to create a comprehensive set of guidelines. Even the prohibition against photos of dead bodies, which many organizations impose, is subject to exceptions.
In 1992, after an American serviceman was killed during Operation Restore Hope in Somalia, his shirtless corpse was dragged through the streets of Mogadishu. The next day, several news organizations published the image of the dead soldier, tied by the wrists, hands above his head, as a group of Somalis cheered and poked his body with sticks.
This photo had an immediate impact. Some believe it hastened the withdrawal of American troops. A similar phenomenon occurred in Vietnam, and one wonders if support for the Gulf War would have weakened if Americans could have seen the tens of thousands of dead Iraqis on the ground instead of grainy satellite images of “disabled targets.”
In the wake of round-the-clock coverage of the school shootings in Colorado, people have expressed disgust over some of the images in the news media. In many cases, these complaints are justified — particularly with respect to the repetition of these images, which was becoming gratuitous and was distorting the story’s larger significance.
In news environments that are competitive, high-profile and deadline-driven, the temptations to publish or broadcast things that go too far are manifold. The most important lesson for journalists in these situations is to avoid detaching themselves from their emotions. It is only natural for journalists to shut off their sympathetic impulses for the sake of objectivity, or even for their own self-preservation.
If reporters in these situations can put themselves in the place of victims and victims’ families — even momentarily — they will significantly reduce the risk of going too far.
But as news consumers, we have responsibilities as well. In the face of these tragedies and disturbing images, we should not delude ourselves into thinking that by sanitizing our media we will help civilize our society. No society can advance by blinding itself. And few stories of death and suffering can be fully expressed without images that challenge us.
As repellant as some of these images are, they are part of the truths we must confront. The fact that they elicit such strong reactions is precisely why they are necessary. Of course, it is also why they are so prone to crossing boundaries of taste and decency.
So, where are those boundaries? I’m not sure. But as a starting point, I think back to the two women who lost children in Lockerbie and Los Angeles, and I can’t help but think that in those instances my instincts were correct — that those were moments too personal to have been stolen for public consumption.
Of course I might just be blaming the media for something I needed to witness to appreciate the depth of these tragedies.

Erik Ugland’s column appears alternate Monday’s. He welcomes comments on his column or the Daily to [email protected].