Siuan wrote:While I'd like to say I was really torn about the DM publishing the pictures of dead people (including children), it wasn't much of a dilemma in my head: I think it's a good thing on the whole.
Yes, perhaps they should not have been on the homepage, but people would have been less encouraged to read the terrible news if they weren't. And just because we 'shouldn't' have to see it, it doesn't make it any less real. It certainly made me think about the plight of Syria more than anything else has done - and wish that more could/would be done to lift its people out of crisis.
Of course, images like this will generate clicks, and comments, and there will be a core group of Mailites who will always contribute nasty, throwaway comments and slurs about the forrins. In this case, I prefer to live with that if it means close international attention is being drawn to what looks like a terrible atrocity.
I know it's hard on occasion to resist the automatic reaction to oppose everything the Mail says or does, but (as I believe another thread here was called), sometimes, just sometimes, they do something which is at least heading in the right direction.
I am pretty much in total agreement. The Mirror, the mail, The Carnoustie Courier - they are all commercial news organisations and their job is to report the goings on in their particular constituency and to make a profit in doing so whether through circulation sales or online.
In the case of the Middle East, I'd say that this story has high geo-political significance and could well see us move further towards British boots being on the ground. Plus, there's the impact upon crude prices which, in turn, feed through to almost everything we buy.
The mail, of course, rarely behaves like a newspaper but when it does, I am not going to complain.
Should it be front page news? Yes, it should. To relegate it to a secondary slot serves no purpose other than to spare the squeamishness of those who would rather not think about similar (albeit not of this scale) atrocities that happen every day on every continent. Don't like to see news in a newspaper? That's what Closer is for.
Jack believed in the inherent goodness of humanity, and felt a deep social responsibility to protect that. Through us all, Jack marches on.