Media

For the Herald, a difficult judgment call

by Dan Kennedy

It is, without question, one of the most difficult issues a newspaper editor has to face. A photographer hands in a dramatic picture from the scene of a tragedy that depicts a victim at his or her most vulnerable. Worse, the victim later dies. Do you run the picture and risk an outraged response from some readers? Or do you publish a less controversial -- and less newsworthy -- photo?

Last Thursday, February 10, the Boston Herald led with its strongest shot: a photo of Gerald Kaplan, an accountant who had suffered a heart attack at the scene of a Newton office-building fire that had already claimed four lives. The photo, by Mark Garfinkel, showed firefighters rushing Kaplan out of the building on a stretcher; his torso was exposed, and his underwear was clearly visible. Kaplan later died, bringing the toll to five.

Not surprisingly, the photo prompted considerable criticism from readers, who charged the Herald with exploiting a dying man. "You owe this man's family an apology," wrote one reader in a letter that the paper published on Monday. Indeed, the letters were almost all critical, using words and phrases such as "appalled," "poor taste," "despicable," and "gross error in judgment." Publisher Pat Purcell weighed in with a statement defending the use of the picture, saying, "We felt the photo represented both the heroism and tragedy of the situation. We did not intend to sensationalize or exploit this story, and we are sorry that so many readers were upset."

Certainly the decision to run the picture was a questionable call, but editor Andy Costello defends it. The photo, he says, depicted "everyday heroism by firefighters that doesn't get reported too often." The Herald received an estimated "couple of hundred" complaints, he adds, saying, "I understand the sensitivity, believe me." But, he continues, "I think we've got a responsibility to portray the news as it happens. This had dimensions of heroism as well as tragedy."

Bill Ketter, chairman of the journalism department at Boston University's College of Communication, had to deal with the question of whether to publish such photos during his years as editor of the Quincy Patriot Ledger. "It's a tough call, because to some people it represents an invasion of privacy," he says. "But if it is newsworthy, and if it does show the human dimension of the fire, my inclination is to run it." Adds Bradley Wilson, executive director of the National Press Photographers Association: "There's never a cut-and-dry to these things. It's always gray."

Significantly, the one positive letter the Herald published on Monday was from Brookline fire-department captain Fred Babcock, who participated in the attempted rescue of Kaplan. Babcock thanked the Herald "for portraying our profession in the only way it can be -- reality."