PLANK DECEMBER 4, 2012
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Was the New York Post wrong to print on its Tuesday cover a photo of Ki Suk Han, struggling to lift himself onto a subway platform moments before a Queens-bound Q train struck and killed him? The question preoccupied the media Tuesday, and most journalists didn't treat the Post's choice too kindly. "A remarkable photo, but too gruesome for A1," wrote The Huffington Post's Ethan Klapper. (Never mind that the Post, with its tabloid format, doesn't have an A1 because it doesn't have sections.) "Sickening rubber-necking," was how Guardian Sports editor Ian Prior described it. "Imagine how this man's family feels." And some commenters were as disgusted with the photographer as they were with the paper, wondering why he did not attempt to save Han's life.
A useful litmus test in cases like this is to ask what difference it would have made. The critics who would withdraw their complaints if they knew that the family had sanctioned the use of the image, or that the photographer he could not have intervened, are right to ask those questions. But for now, they're objecting on assumptions without knowing the underlying facts. (The Post isn't helping by stonewalling reporters on these points.) The rest of these critics are just grossed out, and are making an argument about taste with artificial moral flavoring baked in.
The taste argument happens to be the better one. It is just an unpleasant, nasty picture. And the text around the picture -- "DOOMED" -- makes it even coarser. So let's call this front page what it is: tasteless. That's a judgment that's bigger than just this picture: What kind of newspaper would traffic in the cruelty of this man's circumstances?
Well, the Post. It's a tabloid, with a classic tabloid sensibility. It knows what you want to talk about, or at least what enough readers to keep it going want to talk about. Everything else is academic silliness. It's fine to hate the conversations the Post chooses to foster and insert itself into, but it's a tougher thing to tell it, or any newspaper, that it ought to be better than the people who read it.
In the tabloid universe, if you have a camera out just as big news is happening, you snap the picture and then immediately show up at the photo desk and try to sell what you've got. Once the paper buys the picture, and it's in the editors' room, the editors have to have some pretty serious arguments for not publishing something that actually depicts the life-or-death moment that every New Yorker has imagined, that some have survived, and that everyone is talking about this morning. Arguments like: it will compromise national security; it exposes a source; it was taken illegally.
After September 11, there were similar arguments that people who leapt to their deaths from the World Trade Center were protected by a form of privacy; or that readers ought to be protected from such images (which many of us actually witnessed with our own eyes).
In hindsight most of us know, or think we know, the response to that argument. These events happened, and they were news, and it would have been no more legitimate to suppress photos documenting the events as it would have been to spike the written accounts of them.
This picture on the Post is not a pleasant sight. The man about to be killed looks all alone as the train bears down on him, prompting the viewer not only to shudder in horror, but to wonder why no one on the platform did more to help. That conversation continues to play out on the internet, particularly as it pertains to that photographer who took the picture. I won't get into that here—I just don't know enough about the circumstances to be able to come to a useful judgment about it.
Either way, the Post's management will soon know exactly how many people bought that paper. And they will know how many more or fewer bought it than the Daily News, which, sitting right next to it on the newstand, published an old story about Kate and Will's managing to conceive a child and a report on A-Rod's hip.
The sick public will have spoken, and the people who criticized the Post will know how much better they are than the ones who bought it.
Tom McGeveran is the co-founder and co-editor of Capital New York.
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10 comments
Here's the problem. The platform looks evacuated around the guy trying to escape his death. Except for a person who is conveniently photographing the guy instead of helping pull him up. That would be a useful exertion on his/her part. But, instead, the Post's business model literally trades on the notion that the scoop picture is more valuable than the life of the very man they'll continue to write about for the next week. This is, in short, the very sort of thing that led to the Leveson probe of the British press. Is it coincidental that this is Murdoch's American gem?
- chaitless
December 4, 2012 at 4:23pm
" It's fine to hate the conversations the Post chooses to foster and insert itself into, but it's a tougher thing to tell it, or any newspaper, that it ought to be better than the people who read it." This is nonsense, pure and simple. We all know that people taken as a whole often have base or cruel tastes. But there is no law of social organization that says we ought to or have to excuse pandering to those tastes, and thereby encouraging them. It so happens that this country does have a law (the 1st Amendment) that prevents us from outlawing such pandering, but we ought nonetheless condemn, scorn and vilify it. As for the photographer, the fact that this person, unless they were feeble and wheelchair bound, and maybe even then, took the time to drag out a cell phone and point and click, rather than moving immediately to help this person tells me everything I need to know about them. They deserve the nightmares they're likely to have from this. The only thing that could make the picture excusable is if it were copped from a fixed closed circuit camera, in which case selling or giving it to the paper is disgusting and in incredibly poor taste, but probably not an complete dereliction of the perpetrators humanity. And, no, I don't care if the person knew they would be too late or too weak to help. Faced with the chance to save an innocent life, you try, period, even if the chance is small.
- IowaBeauty
December 4, 2012 at 5:38pm
For heaven's sake, WHY DID YOU REPRINT THE PICTURE????
- Wonderland
December 4, 2012 at 5:39pm
I'm not quite sure what this guy's argument is. We agree that the picture, headline, and text are, to put it mildly, "tasteless." But, he says, that's the nature of the beast. We can probably agree on that too. The Post is garbage (though not as bad as the British tabloid press). He then proceeds to defend the beast, though, on the ground that people buy it, and everything else is "academic silliness." He also slips in a specious comparison to people jumping off the towers that he doesn't seem to really believe and implies that the critics of the paper are snobs, as though the weird New York newspaper market (one that, alone among American cities, continues to support a Fleet Street-ish tabloid press) must be the last word. Does he really believe *that*? Does he think that a paper, or any media outlet, is immune from criticisms of poor taste simply because people buy it? He can't think that; it makes no sense.
- JakeH
December 4, 2012 at 5:44pm
After reading this idiotic "defense", all I can say to TNR's editorial staff (hat seems to be degenerating by the day with these bullshit "articles") is SERIOUSLY? What happened to the new Noams and Jon Chaits at TNR? They seem to be far and few between, instead we get drivel like this. Articles like this only reinforce stereotypes of 'coastal elites' the wingers love to skewer and that TNR has some serious problems.
- tmmats
December 4, 2012 at 5:58pm
http://abcnews.go.com/US/brave-man-killed-subway-train-protect/story?id=17873672 "...The suspect could be heard arguing with Han just moments before he hurled Han onto the tracks at the 49th Street and Seventh Avenue subway station, according to surveillance video released by the police. The suspect is heard telling the victim to stand in line and "wait for the R train." After Han was thrown onto the tracks, the suspect fled from the station and Han tried to pull himself out of the subway track bed. A freelance photographer for the New York Post was on the platform and said he ran towards the train flashing his camera hoping to alert the train to stop in time, but the train caught Han against the shoulder deep platform wall. The photographer, R. Umar Abbasi, caught an eerie photo of Han with his head and arms above the platform and staring at the oncoming train. ..."
- K2K
December 4, 2012 at 6:37pm
Most people buy the NY Post because 1) it is affordable, 2) for the sports and page 6 gossip, and 3) rolled up, it is a useful defensive object, especially if you don't have an umbrella with you. It's been almost 20 years since the NYC subways started to become safe again. Probably a good idea to remind people that you still have to be alert, and use the technique someone taught me in 1978: while on the subway, always look like you are crazier than everyone else.
- K2K
December 4, 2012 at 6:48pm
Why in the world they have trains slow to a crawl directly before the platform and then slowly pull into the area is beyond me, we are talking about only a few extra seconds. There will never be anymore of these incidents. Now the poor train conductor has to live with this (not even mentioning the victims family).
- blackton
December 4, 2012 at 7:51pm
Blackton, interesting question. I've never heard of any transit system slowing the trains to a crawl before the stop. I could see it adding up to significant time on typical trips with many stops, especially given that that platforms are very long -- in New York, they take up more of the track than one might realize -- and stops are frequent. Would the system be able to accommodate as many trains and/or passengers if they switched to this plan? Imagine a long string with beads on it that are about an inch apart, and imagine pulling the string through a tube. The faster you pull the string, the beads (the trains) will pass any given spot in the tube more quickly, and more beads will get through. Any obstruction or slow-down on the line means that the thread needs to be pulled slower. Could you relieve the resulting crowding by adding more beads and making them closer? Maybe not -- maybe they're already as close as they can be for safe, smooth operation. This 2007 New York Times article says that many lines are "maxed out" -- meaning that the lines can't handle any more trains, they're already stacked as close they can be up to the point that even a very small delay on one train backs up the whole system, and the trains are still overcrowded. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/26/nyregion/26mta.html?_r=0. My sense is that horrible incidents like this are so rare that going to such lengths to prevent them may be excessive.
- JakeH
December 5, 2012 at 2:12am
JakeH, I have been on the subways and I realize the platform is long, maybe it doesn't have to crawl along there, but slowing down enough just before it so that the driver can see the length would do wonders. A train going 10 miles an hour would have been able to stop on a dime. But I appreciate the stats. Is an occasional disaster worth disrupting 10 seconds multiplied across forever worth it?
- blackton
December 5, 2012 at 9:18am