“What Happens if We Leave Afghanistan” was the headline on the cover of a 2010 Time Magazine, along with an image of a teenage Afghan girl named Aisha who’s nose and ears had been cut off by the Taliban that filled the page.
The Guardian featured a picture of a 2013 Boston Marathon bombing victim, Jeff Bauman and his severed legs. Bauman praised the Associated Press photographer, Charles Krupa’s images for “showing the world the truth.”
Images of Alan Kurdi, a young boy who washed up dead on the shores of Bodrum, Turkey provoked strong debate across media platforms. The argument was whether the images of a deceased child lying face-down in the sand was too harsh for the public to see, or if it was “too important to ignore” (Lewis 2016).
These are all examples of photojournalists straying from the norms of media censorship and showing the public the ugly truth that they are too often sheltered from. Journalists such as Helen Lewis, Alexey Furman, and David Shields argue that the public needs to see what really happens in this world, even if it isn’t a pretty picture, literally.
How are people supposed to understand what situations like war, terrorist attacks, or mass civil deaths are really like if they screen themselves from reality? Shields describes this idea perfectly: “There is an ancient tradition of brutal and more truth-telling war photography. If you only read The New York Times, you’d think war is heaven or, at worst, war is heck.”
As an aspiring photojournalist, I completely agree that the public is much too sheltered from the ugly truths of the real world. How can we truly understand what the world is really like if we never see the bad that happens? I believe we should force ourselves to look, and genuinely observe the graphic content of war zones, civil deaths, and the mortal side of every story. Cause each story truly is too important to ignore.
Information used came from this article: http://niemanreports.org/articles/how-newsrooms-handle-graphic-images-of-violence/
