Job Discussion Forums

Hod · Joined: 28 Apr 2003 Posts: 1613 Location: Home

In a previous life I worked with Malaysia Airlines so was interested, for want of a much better word, in the MH370 (not yet found) and MH17 (apparently shot down over Ukraine) tragedies this year.

Very sadly, no one knows yet what happened to MH370. The events of MH17, though, were just all wrong, sickening. It wasn't just the tragedy, but the crash site being in a war zone gave the media carte blanche to photograph corpses and, in one case which the journalist later apologised for, rifle through baggage.

My previous involvement meant I had more than a passing "interest", and I found myself in July on a foreign news website looking at photographs of corpses. There was a young guy, maybe twenty years old, with his clothes all gone. Another woman looked asleep, but one of her legs was snapped in two. Then, a baby, probably less than two years old. I stopped, shocked and disgusted with myself to be even looking at such images.

Based on the above, maybe I'm not the best to preach, but who exactly is it wants to see live images of grieving families seeing the first corpse from QZ8501 being fished from the ocean today? I don't know if the pictures were from Indonesia or Singapore, but how is it the airport or airline allow such access to these poor people on the worst day of their lives?

I don't know how the families stood for it, presumably they never noticed in their private worlds of horror, pain and grief, but if I was there as a bystander, I would've spat in every one of those photographers' faces.

Evil scum.

RIP QZ8501 Sad

johnslat · Posted: Tue Dec 30, 2014 4:42 pm Post subject:

Dear Hod,

Amen!!!

Regards,
John

natsume · Joined: 24 Apr 2006 Posts: 409 Location: Chongqing, China

"Tragedy porn" really is an apt description.

spiral78 · Joined: 05 Apr 2004 Posts: 11534 Location: On a Short Leash

Ditto, like, etc.
The media coverage is absolutely disgusting.

Shelby · Joined: 24 Dec 2010 Posts: 66 Location: Russia

I agree. It is on a par with the BBC reporter who asked a group of children in an ebola stricken region of Africa to raise their hands if they were orphans and went on to ask if they were now all alone.

scot47 · Joined: 10 Jan 2003 Posts: 15343

Vultures. I would sooner spend my time with politicians than with journalists.

BadBeagleBad · Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2014 5:30 pm Post subject:

So right. At one time I was interested in journalism and it was a simiar event that made me decide it was not the path for me, I would never have had the stomach to do something like that, so heartless.