The relationship between media and victims is so often plainly exploitative. Look no further than this afternoon's News Limited websites, the Herald Sun and the Daily Telegraph. Both featured screen-wide images of a family, a father and two children, moments after they had been told there was no hope that their mother could have survived the crushing impact of the quake.
All three are caught by the camera in a frozen spasm of grief. It is torture to see. It is an extraordinary intrusion ... a stolen moment of agony that has nothing to do with any of us. The news agencies that flog the image have nothing to offer these people in return. No empathy, no support, merely a momentary exploitation of sorrow in the hope the image might arrest the passing internet eye and draw traffic. Grotesque.
This is an extract from a piece in ABC The Drum by Jonathan Green.
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