The Seattle Times called it “disturbing,” but the word
isn’t strong enough to describe Mike Urban’s photograph of a woman being assaulted. Urban snapped the photo during the 2001 Mardi Gras Celebration in Seattle. It shows a helpless woman stripped of her clothing and being groped by a crowd of men, each of them smiling. To “protect her privacy,” the woman’s face has been pixelated.
The photo was never published in a newspaper, but it recently won a first-place National Press Photographer Association award. The NPPA features the photograph on its Web site. Since the NPPA gave the award, the photograph has been surrounded by controversy. Should the picture have been published? Was it worthy of an award? The answer to both questions is no.
Urban worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, but the newspaper ultimately decided not to publish his photograph, since the publication has a policy against publishing photos of sexual abuse. Editors were also legitimately concerned about the subject, since the woman in the photograph hasn’t been identified.
As Rebecca Roe, a lawyer and the former head of King County’s prosecutor’s sexual assault unit, told the Seattle Times, publishing the photograph is simply a “revictimization, not just of the woman in the photo, but of other women.”
Others would argue that news is news, no matter how shocking, and the photograph should have been published in the newspaper and on the Web site in order to “get the word out” that these assaults actually happened at the Mardi Gras celebration.
True, the media have a responsibility to report the news. However, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer ran a front-page story describing the assaults, including the one in the picture. It is imperative that the public be informed about events such as this one, but there is no acceptable reason why the potentially harmful photograph needed to be included with the story.
Yes, the photo is newsworthy and has shock value, but sometimes ethics needs to win out over all else. And in this case, ethics should tell us it’s wrong to run a photo of a woman being assaulted, especially without her permission. It’s a serious invasion of her privacy. Furthermore, even with her face blocked out, if the victim saw the photo, she would be forced to relive the experience. Other assault victims would also have to relive theirs.
Kudos to the editors at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer for making the right decision — one that other journalists should take an example from.
The other aspect of the debate centers around whether or not the photograph was worthy of an award in the first place. Many people are upset that the photographer didn’t try to help the victim, though Urban says he was “obviously unable to do something.”
While I acknowledge that it is highly unlikely Urban could have physically fended off the woman’s numerous attackers, I wanted to hear that he at least attempted to help. In the ideal situation, Urban would have thrown aside his role as the passive photographer and at least tried. But then, in the ideal situation, the assault never would have happened. Still, I have a hard time supporting an award that was won because of someone else’s misfortune.
Common sense told editors not even to publish it in a newspaper. Ultimately, the photograph doesn’t belong in any publication or contest without the consent of the woman pictured.