Is a picture worth a few words?

I’ll be gone most of the day today, but I wanted to touch upon something I largely ignored in blogging about the puzzling tragedy of the death by asphyxiation of three little boys in Camden.
That’s this picture of David Agosto, the father of one of the boys, shown just after opening the trunk:

Agosto.jpg

When I wrote about the incident, I didn’t think the photo was all that significant to the story. That’s just the way I am. I get all stirred up about the facts, and when I can’t find out what the facts are, I tend to get frustrated.
I WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENED, DAMMIT!
It’s a little like getting stuck in a huge traffic jam that stretches on for miles. If I can turn on the radio and find out what happened and how far down the road the jam-up is, that makes the wait more bearable. If I can’t find out, I suffer more until I do find out.
Likewise, when I read about something like three boys dying in a car, I want to know the details. Showing me a picture of the grieving father, well, that does highlight the tragic nature of what happened, but it just isn’t helpful information.
But to others, the picture is the whole story, or at least the most important part of the story. Here’s the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Managing Editor, Anne Gordon:

The Inquirer, on an inside page, displayed the CN8 images of Agosto opening the trunk, and his reaction. A photograph of Agosto being consoled by a friend [that’s the photo above] ran on the front page.
Managing editor Anne Gordon said the images captured a moment of pure emotion. “These photos were not an invasion of privacy because the pain, the hope for recovery, and, later, the sense of loss was shared by many, many more people who had come to care for these young lives as this story unfolded,” Gordon said. “The photo we ran on 1A was also a powerful photo, but it was chosen for the front page because it showed something more than the pain of the loss. It showed the loving support of the community. That was, in the end, the greater part of this story.”

A sentiment I can’t quarrel with, because obviously, for some people, the picture is the greater part of the story. I agree that it’s part of the news (and of course “a picture is worth a thousand words”), but it doesn’t satisfy my need to know what happened.
Call me heartless if you will, but I’d rather be given an accurate figure of how many people were killed — and by a newspaper with some idea of what the word “kill” means — than a picture of a victim or a grief-stricken relative.
Death and grieving are familiar enough to me that when someone dies (especially suddenly) I already know that next of kin will grieve and be in shock. The horror of a father discovering his son’s body is normal, and to be expected. The image above is not unlike the many images I’ve seen of grieving parents in wars or terrorist bombings.
Had the man’s son been shot to death in crossfire between two drug dealers, stung to death by bees, or mauled to death by someone’s pet lion, I’d also expect to see a look of profound, agonized grief.
The news is what happened, when it happened, and where and how it happened, not the entirely predictable feelings of the people immediately affected.
Whether it’s death by car trunk, death by fire, death by firearms, or death by “pit bull,” only an abnormal parent would fail to be upset. (A picture of an emotionless, expressionless parent would be more newsworthy, IMO.) The rest of us (the ones who aren’t the immediate victims) are upset, but not in the same way. While there’s always the “rubbernecking” phenomenon, we are usually more interested in finding out what happened so we can avoid having that happen to us, or prevent it from happening to others — something I hasten to add is not always possible in ways consistent with upholding freedom, because the latter comes with inherent risks.
People’s emotional nature often demands justice in cases like this, There are victims, and there must be villains to be punished, laws to be passed. It’s natural enough to feel this way, but it isn’t always rational. What interested me about the fatal Toyota trunk story is that the usual villains are completely absent. There’s no “evil breed” of dog to be blamed. No gun. No evil landlord whose negligence caused the building to collapse. So I jokingly offered the evil Toyota Corporation as the scapegoat. Fortunately, most people are not quite so stupid as to blame Toyota (at least I hope they’re not), so it works as satire, and makes my point, which is that feelings, while they have to be acknowledged, should not get in the way of rational analysis. Or fairness.
If an image of a grief-stricken parent causes people to become irrational and emotional, if it causes them to advocate things they rationally would not advocate (such as banning guns, pit bulls, or Toyotas), then that picture is more inflammatory more than it is illuminating. It’s still news, but putting it in context becomes all the more appropriate.
Considering that it’s equally as ridiculous to blame Toyotas as it is to blame guns or pit bulls, I think it’s fair to share the picture of the grieving father above, as a reminder that there are as many dangerous things that can cause death as there are illusory villains and scapegoats to blame.


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