The scenario: Two days after a 7-month-old baby girl is reported missing, her father leads police to a vacant lot where her tiny body is found wrapped in a plastic bag.
Back in the newsroom, key editors are deciding how to tell this story in the next day’s newspaper. Among the photos they review is a picture of an employee of the medical examiner’s office carrying the baby’s body in what looks to be a white trash bag. There are also four other pictures available:
- A mug shot of the baby taken before she died.
- A photo of of searchers removing a log under which the body was found.
- A photo of investigators at the crime scene.
- A photo of a man identified by police as a boyfriend of of Miracle’s mother. He had been charged with injuring another child in the family.
Participants in Poynter’s “Doing Ethics” seminar were presented with this scenario this week. A group of newspaper reporters and photographers, broadcast photojournalists, radio editors, and academicians, the seminar participants discussed which of the pictures they would publish and why, using ethical lessons they had learned during the week to guide their decision-making process.
Consider what you would have done, then follow the path of the decision makers at the Detroit Free Press for the outcome.
THE SCENE
J. Kyle Keener, deputy photography director at the Detroit Free Press, was shaving at 6:30 a.m. Sept.14 when he heard a radio report that Miracle’s father was taking police to a location on the west side of Detroit. Keener knew that Free Press photographer Gabriel B. Tait lived nearby. “Immediately, I called Gabe and told him to get up, get some pants on and get going,” said Keener.
It was Tait’s day off. He would leave the next day for his honeymoon in Hawaii. But this morning, he went to the scene. He found himself contending with a couple of pit-bull dogs as he made his way into a backyard in the neighborhood. Not long afterwards, authorities discovered a tiny corpse in a plastic bag beneath some wood and a tire. Tait was shooting as one of the searchers held up a piece of wood, and he was still shooting as a representative of the Medical Examiner’s office carried the bag with the corpse from the spot where it was found.
“Immediately, I called Keener,” Tait recalled. Keener then informed Managing Editor Carole Leigh Hutton and Nancy Andrews, Detroit Free Press director of photography.
BACK IN THE OFFICE
By 1 p.m., Tait was back in the office, processing his film and completing his preliminary edit. The final edit was made after consultation with Keener. “We closely studied the 16 or so frame sequence of the body being removed and agreed on six frames,” he said. “We discussed the eyes of the Medical Examiner office worker and the position of the baby’s body. There were some images that were way too graphic because you could see the shape of the figure.”
“Immediately we knew that this was the picture,” Keener said of the image they selected. “This picture powerfully showed the extent of how poorly our children are treated. It looked like a person putting out the trash. ”
THE DECISION
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For Nancy Andrews, in the photo director’s job at the Free Press for only a few months, “this was the most troubling and delicate decision yet.” She recounted: “We talked at length in the department, we talked about the eyes of the coroner, the position of his fingers and hand and the (possible) reaction of our readers after we published.”
Andrews volunteered to take the calls and responses from readers. “We knew that some people would object to the photo,” she said, “but that very objection (appearing to be taking out the trash) was why we ran it. It is our responsibility, as tough as it may be, to report the truth.”
The decision was made at 2:30 p.m. to make the story the centerpiece package on the next day’s front page. After the budget meeting later that afternoon, most of the senior editors for the news, design and photo desks gathered in the center of the newsroom. Executive editor Bob McGruder was not in the building at the time of the decision.
As Hutton recalls the gathering, “It was around 4:30-4:45 and we had lots of voices involved in the conversation. I respected the photo department’s position…They had the newsroom’s support and there was strong agreement to run the photograph” Hutton said she believes the paper made the right decision, but she acknowledges: “It made my stomach flop.”
THE REACTION FROM READERS
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The first batch of letters, sent mostly via e-mail, was overwhelmingly negative. By early this week, the Editorial Page had counted 100 calls and 160 e-mails, faxes and letters (with many coming from the same person). Andrews had responded to 45 callers and her voice mail was overloaded. As the paper provided fuller explanation of its decision, reader reaction became less critical of the newspaper.
In one e-mail, a reader indicated a change of heart after calling the photo department at the Free Press: “I talked to a young man who defended this photo decision. He shared the department’s decision process while I shared my indignation and bewilderment. I spent that day at work thinking about little Miracle and the circumstances of her death. A sickening and profound sadness left me numb. How could someone do this? How did the Family Independence Agency fail so miserably?…Unexpectedly the Photography Department Manager, Andrews, called me that night. Ms. Andrews explained the decision to run the photo. She did not speak with scorn or defensiveness but with sadness, kindness and passion. I was impressed with her. As a frontline media soldier she was not jaded but troubled by this horrible crime.”
A RESPONSE FROM THE EXECUTIVE EDITOR
Bob McGruder explained the decision in a letter posted to freep.com on Friday and published in Saturday’s newspaper.
THE AFTERMATH IN THE NEWSROOM
“We did the right thing, but we could have done better,” said Keener, the deputy photo director. “We should have made different decisions about the headline, caption, and story. The aggregate package is important . . . Gabriel said in the caption (that) the baby was found in the bag and we did not report that to our readers.” Hutton and Andrews agree that the paper could have done a better job with the story’s text elements.
FREE PRESS LESSONS LEARNED
- We should have reached out to the family. (Keener)
- Don’t be scared to make tough decisions, but be aware of possible consequences. We believe the greater good is served by publishing these pictures. (Keener)
- We should have explained to readers, on the first day, why we decided to run the photograph as we did. We should have reported, in the caption beneath the photo, that the baby was found in the bag. We did not convey to readers the reasons why the picture was there. We should have run Bob McGruder’s column on Day One. (Andrews and Hutton)
- We should have paid more attention to the information gathered by the photographer. Gabe had the correct information in the caption, but the copy desk did not use it. (
- We could have done a better job with information boxes: contact information to support and help groups like The Michigan Children’s Omsbudman organization and Family Independence Agency with telephone numbers. (Andrews)
- I thought about what I was doing, I if I had it to do all over again, I would take the same picture. (Tait)
- We should have added some reporting about our decision to publish the picture on the first day. Some like Bob’s column should have been included in the first day’s report. (Hutton)
A PERSONAL PERSPECTIVE FROM PHOTOGRAPHER GABRIEL TAIT
I thought about what I was doing. If I had to do it all over again, I would take the same picture. Seeing that little baby’s body, being carried in a plastic bag, hurt my heart. I could only hope that I had done my job and that it was fair and accurate.”
A PERSONAL PERSPECTIVE FROM KENNY IRBY
I fully support the reflective thinking, energy and effort that went into the decision to publish this telling image of Miracle Jackson’s untimely death. I would have selected the same photographs to publish.
