Fremantlebiz - Paul's Letter from Australia

On the ethics of confronting imagery

One of the more macabre incidents following the Bali bombings last Saturday evening was the recovery of the heads of three suicide bombers.

Photographs of the three men were subsequently prepared by the Indonesian police for distribution to the media, in the hope that publication would lead to the identity of them.

I first saw the pictures on an ABC TV news programme about Monday, but the ABC in its wisdom blurred the images so that identification by any of its viewers would have been impossible. This lends to three conjectures:

1. The bosses at the ABC believe that ABC viewers are too sensitive to be exposed to the original images.
2. In their naivete, they thought that it would be impossible for any Australian viewer to have known, or previously met such people.
3. Someone high up in the ABC wants to contribute to the delay in identifying the bombers.

The Australian newspaper had no such compunction and showed the three heads the next day without blurring them. Was there a hostile reaction from the readership? Not if the letters to the editor have been anything to go by. Certainly it didn't offend me.

However I was offended by the ABC's feeble attempt at censorship and immediately sought out the images on the web. Reuters have them. Unless they have been moved they should be available by clicking here. It's now been determined that the name of the man on the left is "Gareng."

I think the images quite interesting. Compared to their victims, the bombers' faces are intact, and seemingly with surprised expressions frozen at time of death. Two have their eyes open, the third has them closed. Had I been a survivor of their attacks, I would have wanted to see these pictures.

The Indonesian media, and much of the rest of the world, have been running them during the week, plus much more graphic ones. I was watching an Indonesian TV news program in Bahasa on SBS yesterday afternoon. The Bali bombings are still receiving significant attention in Indonesia. No namby pamby stuff from them.

There was an image that revealed the bombers had not experienced as neat a decapitation as might have been supposed. One of the heads also had part of an upper torso and a left arm still attached. My reaction was ambivalent - a bit like looking at a carcass from a butcher's shop. My point is that these images were shown in Australia, albeit inadvertently as part of a retransmitted foreign language news program. I haven't heard of any protests, but I don't suppose SBS or the ABC will include them in their own English language news broadcasts.

However, in my opinion the ABC's was wrong in censoring the original facial images. These were an important development in the overall news story, and a significant investigative tool. If they felt they were too graphic for their audience they shouldn't have run them at all. The funny thing about censors is they can view these sort of things without being corrupted, but always believe the rest of the nation can't.

At the moment there is a huge row going on here in Western Australia over another set of macabre imagery. It relates to an incident I mentioned on 13 April this year.

Two men, men allegedly on the run from the police, had been discovered dead near their old broken down Land Rover on the remote and little used Talawana Track in the wilderness of our northwest Pilbara region, just north of Lake Disappointment. They had died of thirst about four weeks previously. They perished because of their complete unpreparedness to travel in a remote arid region.

The row is over the distribution via the internet of confronting coronial photographs of the bodies. About six hundred Western Australian police not involved in the case are thought to have received 14 leaked photographs and original police briefing notes. About 50 officers are known to have forwarded the material to email addresses outside the police circle, and it's now ended up on a US website.

The WA Police Commissioner is furious. He views it as a scandal. The mens' relatives are furious too. They reckon that those involved in the distribution have been voyeurs. One says he is going to instruct his solicitor to issue a civil suit to each of the officers who received the email. That will be expensive, but probably won't achieve much.

Police officers have to routinely deal with many terrible sights in their careers. Fatal car accidents, murders, suicides, natural disasters, and incidents like this, where they have been obliged to investigate someone's death by misadventure. Plus they often have the wrenching task of dealing with distraught relatives. Increasingly too, there are many people outside the police force who inadvertently become involved with these matters. Firemen, ambulance drivers, emergency service volunteers, tow truck drivers, members of the public and police officers' spouses.

I can see that distributing such material could have an educational value. It allows people to confront the terrible misfortune of others, and to allow them in their own time to come to terms with it. Viewing such things does not necessarily mean you are voyeuristic. Sure, it may have a tendency to desensitise, but this is not a bad thing for people likely to be exposed to such things in real life. With the present state of the world; and our jury system, that probably includes many of us.

Many people are possessed of a curiosity to know more about such incidents when they might be involved on the periphery. But it rarely happens. With every incident there is a much more detailed level of knowledge than is ever reported by the media. Reporters can withold many details. A favoured argument is that the public doesn't need to know certain things. What "things" actually are is ambiguous. It often depends of the value judgment of the person controlling the flow of information. But I have no doubt that when people are better informed, this encourages better understanding.

Lack of authentic information encourages destructive gossip.

That this matter has gone the way it has suggests that amongst WA police there is a strong desire to be better informed, and better prepared for the sort of things they might one day have to deal with. Perhaps it reflects a failure in police education and a hierarchical desire to be uncontroversial?

Perhaps too it reflects a failing of the media - particularly the Western Australian print media which is conspicuous for its shallow reporting on many issues, compared for example to newspapers like Melbourne's The Age and the nationally distributed The Australian.

So why have official secrecy in these matters at all? Well sometimes the original evidence is contradictory to the final outcome of an enquiry or court case. There are innumerable historical examples of this with cases right around the country. Extant material which should have been presented, wasn't. It might be fair to say that overt secrecy in some investigative matters can sometimes conveniently facilitate a coverup.

The most difficult issue with the Pilbara photos is the feelings of the relatives. Given the way the issue has been publicised, their outrage is is understandable, but suing 600 or even 50 police is unrealistic. Hopefully, the anger will subside in time.

Discussing these matters reminds me that once upon a time the WA police used to routinely display gruesome photos in their pavilion at the annual Royal Show. It used to be quite an attraction, but while the pavilion still operates, such imagery has long been phased out due to the sensitivity.

© MMV Paul R. Weaver.

About the writer

Check out each month's subject index on the Calendar Page for my "common-man" monologues about survival in 21st century Australia – plus a little history occasionally. An original essay is added most days.

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