I was sickened and saddened when while reading The Daily Sentinel on Aug. 27,  I found a completely inappropriate picture on page 11B.

There was a picture of a rescue and recovery in process of two, high-voltage line workers. As the wife of a lineman, I was dismayed to see the bodies of the injured and fatally injured workers in the newspaper. The danger of this trade is all too real and this was a very private moment for the men and their families that didn’t need to be cheapened by being splattered in the newspaper.

I don’t recall ever seeing pictures printed of close-ups of firemen, policemen or traffic workers when they are injured on the job. I find it in extremely poor taste to show these men, one hanging by the rescue rope in the background and one looking at the world as he is being rescued, in a newspaper. A better tribute would have been a picture of the pole, with a short caption explaining that there was an accident at this location, such as the picture I found at the Salt Lake Tribune online. This left the men and their families a little privacy in the matter of what the accident looked like.

I believe in the future, it would be better to further edit the photos that come from the Associated Press. Imagine for a moment that the injured person was your family member or friend. Is this how you would want the world to see him? Please use better judgment in the future.

VIKTORIA COX
Rifle

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 28th, 2008 at 1:11 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.