The pornography of violence

There’s a story that’s been living in my head the past few weeks. It’s about the death of Dadirai Chipiro. It was described by the UK’s Times Online as “one of the most grotesque atrocities committed by Robert Mugabe’s regime since independence in 1980”.

Jan Raath reporting for The Times in Mhondoro, Zimbabwe takes a narrative approach when describing Mrs Chipiro’s death. He tells how men in three white pickup trucks pulled up outside of the Chipiro home to find Patson Chipiro, head of the Zimbabwean opposition party, in Mhondoro district. Writes Raath: “An hour later they were back. They grabbed Mrs Chipiro and chopped off one of her hands and both her feet. Then they threw her into her hut, locked the door and threw a petrol bomb through the window.”

Closer to home South Africans collectively reeled during the height of the xenophobic violence when we saw a man being burnt alive in a township east of Johannesburg. The “burning man” image would circulate the globe as a symbol of the hatred some South Africans have for foreigners in this country.

The question I want to ask you is this. If you were a journalist with a camera would you have recorded Mrs Chipiro’s death? Would you have taken that photograph of that the man we now know to be Ernesto Alfabeto, Mozambican national and father of three who was burnt to death?

If you were at Abu Ghraib, would you have video documented intimate details of the bloody torture suspected Al Qaeda operatives carried out clandestinely by the CIA? If you were in Iraq would you film the beheading of an American hostage?

The question I am asking is: When does news become the glorification of violence? Is there justification for showing extreme savagery on our television screens and in the press? And at what point do you stop?

I want to spend this week exploring this theme. Violence and how you (and a couple of other people) think it should or shouldn’t be reported on in the media.

For now I would just like to leave you with this question. I’d like to know what you think about what you would do if you were a photographer or journalist documenting violence in this country.

When does news become the glorification or pornography of violence?