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News Analysis
When pictures tell a story … and something more too
K.Narayanan
Because they are the most visible part of the newspaper, photographs produce frequent and often incisive comments from readers. In earlier columns, I dealt with the criteria for the selection, sizing, and positioning of photos in the paper. Readers still raise questions and offer opinions that need comment and clarification.
I have explained earlier that various aspects are taken into account in choosing a picture — the nature of the story it illustrates; its technical quality; its newsworthiness when it is a stand-alone picture; its position in the paper; and so on. The selection is generally a collective decision in which the news desk, the editors, the photo editor, and the designer-layout artist are involved.
A key factor is perception. Each participant has a view, and a consensus is evolved. But perceptions, including the views of readers, differ. Therefore, the impact that a picture produces varies and all too often what is published is criticised by some reader or the other. This applies to the printed word as well. Readers interpret them in their own way and may draw conclusions different from what the writer intended.
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The divergence becomes pronounced if the picture strikes some eyes as gruesome. In earlier columns I cited the justification the editorial department offers, but it can bear some repetition. The latest protest related to the recent terrorist bomb strikes in Jaipur. In the later editions of The Hindu, the photograph on Page 1 (May 14, 2008) was that of a young man’s body on a rickshaw. To me that was a poignant picture: an innocent traveller, victim to mindless terror.
But not all saw it in that light. J. Murli, an occasional contributor from Washington who was in Chennai on a short visit, was eloquent: “Enlightened parents and guardians use The Hindu to encourage their children and wards to take an active interest in current news and events. While I do not suggest that the young should be shielded from all reality, was there any need to print the photograph? … This is not only an affront to the dignity of the dead but also an unnecessary and avoidable shock to young, impressionable minds.”
Dr. S. Vaidyanathan (where is he based?) felt that “human vulnerability or frailty was being projected insensitively … That photograph is not required to convey our collective outrage at what happened at Jaipur … Should media take more responsibility? I think so … That photograph did not increase the empathy I already felt for my fellow human being.”
The readers’ points are understandable. But to me the media’s responsibility is to present reality, not gloss over it. Death is a fact of life that young and old confront in different forms every day. When the occasion warrants it, the newspaper has to face it, as readers must. The picture of the young man found dead in a rickshaw was by no means gruesome (The Hindu has used gruesome pictures in the past, a practice with which I disagreed) and did not look revolting. It highlighted the horror and anti-human nature of terrorist violence.
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This particular picture was in the later editions. A different type of criticism came from one of the readers who got the earlier edition. Dr. J.P. Reddy (Nalgonda) asked: does a leading national newspaper with international recognition have to depend on a TV news channel? Obviously a picture grabbed from TV was used. Could not The Hindu team send snaps of the tragedy that occurred between 7 and 7.45 p.m., asks Dr. Reddy.
This was the result of a technical hitch, the Chief News Editor explained. There was a serious problem (the telephone lines were down) in downloading PTI photos from The Hindu’s NICA system (more about this later). After strenuous efforts by the engineers, the pictures were downloaded and taken in later editions. Such glitches are not unknown in newspaper production using the latest technology.
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Every newspaper, at some time or the other, faces the nightmare of a wrong personality picture with a news item. The Hindu suffered from three such mishaps in recent days. The wrong A.K. Ganguly accompanied the news on the new Chief Justice of the Madras High Court. The detail in the stored caption that the picture was of a senior lawyer of the Supreme Court (no mention of Judge of the Orissa High Court) was obviously overlooked by the person who chose it. That it was not a familiar face was no excuse. Even such an excuse could not be trotted out when Pope Benedict illustrated a news item about Pope John Paul. The error was noted by an alert staffer in Thiruvananthapuram, who called up Chennai. The error was rectified in the later editions; a routine correction followed; but the damage had been done. Was any corrective action initiated?
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For the current generation of journalists, Russi (R.K.) Karanjia might be an unknown figure and that could be offered as an explanation for brother B.K. Karanjia’s picture appearing in a moving tribute that Russi’s close associate P. Sainath wrote for the editorial pages. What do you term this act of commission? Evidently no lessons were learnt; the other two instances followed this.
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Now about NICA (Networked Interactive Content Access). It stores all photos, graphics, and pages of the paper. Every photograph (a very large number every day) and every graphic that arrives in The Hindu is on NICA. The system also stores all pages of all editions of the paper from 2003. It is also to be a common repository for the legacy pages (The Hindu from 1881 to December 2002.) The new agency pictures not published get erased after 45 days unless they are moved to a feature called Advanced Photos for future use — a task handled by the Photo Index and the news desk. Every picture has an ID number and carries details about it, such as the date of arrival, the name of the photographer, the caption, and so on. The pictures can be accessed by a computer search.
As happened on the day of the Jaipur bomb explosions, the system can fail and the editorial team is unable to log in and retrieve pictures. A team of technical people is in charge of the system and it swings into action when there is a crisis.
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“Ban on Myanmar mission to push through more aid” — the headline made reader V. Parameswaran Menon (Thrissur) think that there was a ban on a mission to Myanmar. Only the text made it clear to him that the Ban referred to the U.N. Secretary-General. Headlines need a second or third reading before clearance.
The Editor-in-Chief’s comment on the Ban headline: “There is nothing wrong if a headline occasionally intrigues or surprises the reader, although in this case the effect seems to have been unintended!”
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