Emotional wall paper
Prompted by this post from Jane at Elac, I did a bit of an investigation about typical illustration of web stories involving paedophiles. All involved either African or White paedophiles. About half the stories were unillustrated; the remainder had photographs of: the alleged perpetrator; generic photographs of hands typing at a computer or law courts, or police. There was not a single photograph of a child. Most of the illustrated stories included photographs of alleged perpetrators, where it would be facile to deny the implication of a connection between the person pictured in the photo and the story.
Given that major international news organisations are apparently able to illustrate stories and report on news without publishing photographs of children, The Canberra Times and Sydney Morning Herald should be able to do so too. There is a clear divide between reporting practices of Aboriginal stories and stories involving white kids which belies any claim that the papers are simply ‘illustrating the story’.
September 23, 2007 at 5:33 am
Good stuff! The Australian’s current advertising campaign, with the soulful child in front of Uluru, The heart of a nation, is yet another egregious example - I bet in normal advertising campaigns you have to pay child actors HEAPS to have their faces splashed over the country. I wonder how much em>The Australian paid that child’s family.