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Comment by intralizee | Hacker News Reader

Is it possible to know if it’s morally right to take & share photos of a person in such a state of starvation and without real permission from the person. My perception thinks it’s cruel as if the existence of the person is for the benefit of human existence to progress but this person was to suffer so harsh for it if so and without any choice in the matter of wanting the photo shared.. if there was any benefit in the end. Also if there is potential positivity for humanity that overrides personal permission, maybe all human dread should be forever documented by some type of medium forever. Seems impossible to know and justify whatever side. Someone could have taken a photo or video of the suicide of the photographer and shared it online. I can assume that would be upsetting but maybe bring awareness more so than what did happen or is writing equivalent?

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The cruelty is in causing these scenarios, not documenting them. If anything, sweeping them under the rug by not photographing them makes the situation so much worse, as unseen horrors are much easier to ignore.

Most newspapers have strict rules around reporting suicide specifically to reduce copycats, not out of respect for the dead.

Which, of course, exposes a reality that most media outlets are inadquately contrite about: Most active shooter incidents are indeed suicide attempts, and indeed copycat crimes, which continue to perpetuate specifically due to the attention they are permitted to seize.

Were it not for the horrendous coverage they get, we likely would not have seen nearly as many. So what’s really going on?

This media industry absolutely knows the ramifications of such publicity, and has known what it would feed into from the beginning. They can control themselves. They do it every day. They reduce some catastrophes to a blip or nothing, and amplify others.

Why are active shooter incidents granted such coverage, by a large, tightly controlled apparatus?

I think you’ve hit on a failure point of the media: views more matter now than serving the public.

Exposing a person's misery without their consent is usually not ethical, for example the last stages of someone dying of AIDS. There is nothing to be done and the person deserves some dignity in death.

That is not the same for someone in a critical but reversible or preventable state, their misery is intrinsically a public cry for help and relaying it is similar to shouting "someone is drowning over there", calling attention to their urgent need. For large scale, social issues, an argument can be made that the public good realized outweighs the rights of the anonymous individual used to ilustrate the issue.

As a species, we are hardwired to seek and react to such messages of vulnerability - hence the temptation for the first type of exploitative, undignified depictions of gore.

These things need to be known. I don't think it should require the permission of anyone, whether the subject or the surrounding guerrilla soldiers.

What journalists should (and many do) think about is the impact on the good reputation of the subject. But the child is certainly not victim of any kind of libel here.

I think this is a good solution to the smartphone age questions of "revenge porn" and "creep shots", taking and disseminating photographs of factual events is essentially an act of journalism and should be subject to journalistic ethics.

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