Newsroom: (541) 346-5511
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E-mail: editor@dailyemerald.com
Online Edition:
www.dailyemerald.com
Wednesday, April 17,2002
Editor in Chief:
Jessica Blanchard
; • Managing Editor:
' Jeremy Lang
Editorial Editor:
Julie Lauderbaugh
Assistant Editorial Editor:
Jacquelyn Lewis
POINT/COUNTERPOINT
Winning a Inning baton
The Seattle Times called it “disturbing,”
but the word isn’t strong enough to de
scribe Mike Urban’s photograph of a
woman being assaulted. Urban snapped the
photo during the 2001 Mardi Gras Celebra
tion 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 Photog
rapher Association
award. The NPPA fea
tures 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 wor
thy of an award? The
answer to both ques
tions is no.
Urban worked for the
Seattle Post-Intelli
editOF gencer, but the newspa
per ultimately decided
not to publish his photograph, since the
publication has a policy against publishing
photos of sexual abuse. Editors were also le
gitimately 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, publish
ing the photograph is simply a “revictimiza
tion, 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 newspa
per and on the Web site in order to “get the
word out” that these assaults actually hap
pened 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 describ
ing 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 po
tentially 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, espe
cially without her permission. It’s a seri
ous invasion of her pri
vacy. Furthermore,
even with her face
blocked out, if the vic
tim saw the photo, she
would be forced to re
live the experience.
Other assault victims
would also have to relive theirs.
Kudos to the editors at the Seattle Post-In
telligencer for making the right decision —
one that other journalists should take an ex
ample 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 photogra
pher didn’t try to help the victim, though
Urban says he was “obviously unable to
do something.”
While! acknowledge that it is highly un
likely 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 publica
tion or contest without the consent of the
woman pictured.
E-mail columnist Jacquelyn Lewis
at jacquelynlewis@dailyemerald.com .Her opinions
do not necessarily reflect those of the Emerald.
Picture worth eon than 1 ,ODO words
The image of a woman — her face
blurred to protect her identity, strug
gling to free herself as she is stripped
of her clothes and sexually abused by ri
otous crowds at last year’s Mardi Gras
celebration in Seattle — is completely
disgusting. In an equal-opportunity as
sault, black, white, Asian and Hispanic
hands clamor to grab her breasts and
crotch while other revelers pin down her
arms and legs. The woman is obviously
dazed and helpless while jovial faces of
ON THE WEB
Mike Urban's photograph can be viewed at the
National Press Photography Association’s Web
site, httpy.Awww.nppa.org/bestofpj/ethics.htm
titillated men swarm
around her. The photo
is extremely graphic
in nature and depicts
what most people
would choose not to
see over their morning
cottee on the front
page of the newspaper — humankind at
its worst.
But just because the image, taken by
Seattle Post-Intelligencer photographer
Mike Urban, is haunting doesn’t mean
people shouldn’t look at it. On the con
trary, Urban’s photo is the most impor
tant image taken during the violent Pio
neer Square riots — where one man was
brutally beaten to death in the streets —
precisely because of its evocative nature.
Sexual assault is a reality of life, and
people who do not understand its ramifi
cations or turn a blind eye to the epidem
ic need a picture as shocking as Urban’s
to effect social change.
The photo, which was never printed in
the P-I itself, won first place in the 2001
National Press Photography Associa
tion’s “Best of photojournalism —
domestic news” category, much to the
chagrin of opponents who claim it was
unethical for Urban to take the picture in
the first place. But as a journalist,
Urban’s duty was to photograph what
was happening that awful night — not to
police an angry mob of sexual predators.
After all, that’s what the Seattle Police
Department was for, and by in large, offi
cers failed the public by simply watch
ing the melee unfold.
I am from the Seattle area, and many
of my girlfriends were at Pioneer Square
that night. They have told me their hor
ror stories of being grabbed, sexually as
saulted, verbally harassed and scared to
death of what the crowd would do next.
But the stories of the sexual assault
survivors somehow got lost in the con
troversy surrounding the SPD’s apathet
ic response to the riots. And my friends’
struggles that night are epitomized
by the sexual violence that the anony
mous woman sadly
experienced.
A picture like
Urban’s is worth a
thousand survivors’
stories to be told
about that night, and
it should not be swept
under the rug just be
cause it is controver
sial. Sexual assault
survivors are con
stantly being brushed
off by a society that
would rather believe
these kinds of atroci
ties don’t happen in
the first place. Although Seattle-area
newspapers wrote stories about the as
saults, descriptions don’t affect readers
as much as an image could have. So
which is more unethical: Taking a graph
ic picture or pretending the incident
never happened?
What is unethical is not the photogra
pher or the photograph, but the plethora
of men clearly enjoying the sexual as
sault of a powerless woman. I am thank
ful to Urban for taking the picture when
he did, if only to spark a public debate
about the lack of sexual assault discus
sions in the media. What happened to
the woman in the picture was awful, but
it would be far worse to let her story slip
through the cracks of social denial.
E-mail editorial editor Julie Lauderbaugh
at julielauderbaugh@dailyemerald.com. Her opinions
do not necessarily reflect those of the Emerald.
Lauderbaugh
Editorial editor
Editorial Policy
Responses can be sent to
JettefS@clailyemerald.com. Letters to the editor
and guest commentartesare encouraged. Letters
are W Is 250 words and guest commentaries
to 550 words. Please include contact information.
The Emerald reserves the right to edit for space,
grammar and style.
Editorial Board Members
Jessica Blanchard
edit! r in hief
Jerem Lang
man ditor
Julie Lauderbaugh
':m editorial editor
Jac> ms
assistant editorial editor
Jared Nicholson
community representative
111 Peter Hockaday
newsroom representative
CORRECTION
in the April 6 story “Debatecontinues over
American Sign Language," ASL Club president
Shun Yanagishita's name was misspelled.
The Emerald regrets the error.
Letter to the editor
Many mascots are demeaning
Congratulations to the Univer
sity law students for bringing up
the important issue of demean
ing school mascots.
I am a seventh generation
Irish/American and am neither a
drunk nor a violent man. Yet, I
have to put up with the Saint
Patrick’s Day drunk-fest and the
Notre Dame’s culturally insensi
tive “Fighting Irish.”
This is truly harmful and dis
respectful to me and my people.
I ask the athletic department to
take a stance for our Irish
students by not playing Notre
Dame.
While we are at it, let us scrub
our mascot, the Ducks. After all,
in the 20th century, land devel
opers and hunters systematical
ly destroyed wetlands and duck
populations in such a way that
would have comparatively
made generals Custer and
Sheradin cringe.
John Muir O’Brien
junior
pre-journalism
Steve Baggs
^,466 5