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Since last Wednesday's 7.0 earthquake struck Haiti I've been thinking about the media's relationship with death and wondering if there is an unconscious double standard when it comes to the way the press exposes non-Caucasian people when they die. For the past week Americans have been bombarded with horrific images of Haitians covered in powdery debris and crushed in rubble. These images quickly got the message across that the already impoverished country of Haiti now needs our immediate help, and America as a whole has jumped in feet first. A picture is worth a thousands words after all.
But as I stare at the close-ups of faces of these dead Haitians plastered on the front pages of newspapers, I realize I never see pictures of dead Caucasian people. We do see old black and white photos of Caucasian women burned to death in the infamous Triangle Factory Fire and photos of stacked emaciated bodies of people killed in concentration camps during WWII, but these photos feel historic. When tragedy strikes white people today, and it does, the press is far more concerned with respecting the families of the victims and protecting the dignity of the dead.
Looking back on the footage of the Minneapolis bridge collapse which occured on August 1st, 2007, I see mourning on-lookers, wide shots of destruction, living victims being gingerly placed in ambulances and somber photos of closed caskets. I do not see any grim pictures of the people that perished that day. There were far fewer victims than in Haiti, but the number of dead is not in question, it's the kind of coverage of the death and destruction that is unbalanced. After 9/11 we were inundated with images of the burning buildings, and wide shots of devastation, but we never saw close-ups of the victims who had no choice but to jump, or who were trapped and killed and burned in the wreckage.
This double standard reminds me of being a child and seeing photographs of topless African women in educational magazines such as National Geographic, but never being allowed to see photos of topless European white women on the beach, which is just as culturally prevalent.
If used to promote donations and aid and awareness, pictures of death and destruction should be shown. But thinking about why we are comfortable showing some and not others should also be considered.
