Debate Lingers Surrounding the Necessity of Traumatic Photos in Modern Journalism
Mandy McGowan was in rehab the first time she saw a photo of her own overdose. The discovery was unintended — the consequence of a nosy glance into the lap of the patient to her right. McGowan’s listless body lay atop a three-page article in TIME magazine, the first of many publications that would forever enshrine her darkest moment.
The photo in TIME magazine was a screenshot taken from a two-minute and twenty-second video of McGowan’s fentanyl overdose in 2016. The video showed McGowan lying unconscious in an aisle of a Family Dollar in Lawrence, Massachusetts, while her toddler sobbed and tugged at her mother’s hair. Two days later, the video was released by the Lawrence Police Department and subsequently published by The Eagle Tribune. The harrowing visual garnered hundreds, then thousands, of clicks, thrusting it into the circulation of major American media outlets like CNN and Fox News.
“I knew that I overdosed in a store but I didn’t know the extent of how viral it went,” said McGowan in a recent phone interview as she reflected on her initial understanding of the video’s origin. “You don’t videotape people and then say, ‘Hey, this is what happened to you.’”
The publicization and subsequent virality of McGowan’s overdose is just one example of the way that trauma is represented through modern American media. In 2023, a simple Google search yields civilian footage of gruesome murders. The popular short-form video app “TikTok” rolls brutal images of wounded Ukrainian refugees in between cooking tutorials. The first instinct of a teenager pressed against the wall during a school shooting is to live-stream their surroundings to Instagram and Facebook. For a society increasingly desensitized, the onslaught of unregulated personal information is unprecedented.
Jenna Miller has noticed this lately — and noticed it’s getting worse to the point of it exhausting her. “I try to stay away from social media in particular because it’s so draining,” said the 34 year-old Ayer resident, who was sitting in Boston Common on a sunny Saturday in April. A new mom, she has been fielding numerous TikTok videos lately of other parents who have lost children. It’s upsetting to her, and makes her want to abandon the app.
Miller grew up in a small town in Texas. Through observing generations of her own family and friends, she learned that ignorance is born from misinformation and uneducation. It took moving across the country for her to realize the extent of some of the social issues that plague Americans. While she understands the importance of awareness and appreciates the constant, accessible stream of news offered by modern technology, Miller questions the emotional toll of always being in the know.
“I don’t know how to keep myself away from it, and I know that it’s affecting my mental health,” said Miller. “I think you need to know things and you need to be exposed to things, but where is the line?”
Many veterans of the industry disagree that 21st century media is more disturbing than in the past. Stan Grossfeld, associate editor at The Boston Globe in Boston, Massachusetts, doesn’t acknowledge a major uptick in the acceptability of graphic images and video. On staff at the Globe as a photographer, writer and editor for over 35 years, Grossfeld believes the publishing of these visuals are up to the discretion of the journalist rather than any editor or standards team.
“There’s always a college textbook answer, but in real life, there’s a whole lot of gray in between the black and white about what is showable and what is not,” said Grossfeld. “It’s not something that you get told, but it’s just something that you have in you as a person — as a human being.”
In 1984, Grossfeld was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography for a series of photographs depicting the devastating effects of the Lebanese Civil War. Grossfeld won again in 1985 for his work in Ethiopia and along the Mexican border. Awarded the Feature Photographer Pulitzer Prize, Grossfeld took images that exposed the horrors of poverty with an emphasis on children. His most famous images include a photograph of an emaciated Ethiopian toddler as he waits for food. The child’s skin is stretched over every bone, and Grossfeld reports that he died later that day. Another well-known image depicts a Lebanese child holding up a prosthetic eyeball after losing his real one to a war-related attack. Despite the graphic nature of these photos, Grossfeld recognizes that limits still exist.
“When I went to Ethiopia, no one taught me that there’s no way you can show something called the tail of hunger — which is when someone is starving to death and the intestines are coming out of the anus in a bloody pool,” said Grossfeld. “If you don’t want to see it in the paper, don’t turn it in. If it’s so disgusting, or gruesome, then you don’t even present it. You have the control.”
Grossfeld’s images resonated. Mothers imagined their own children starving and gaunt; fathers were reminded of their dehumanizing tours of Iraq, Afghanistan or Vietnam. According to the Catholic church, Grossfeld’s photography raised more money for Ethiopia than any other images taken during the famine. These honest depictions of international tragedy were certainly disturbing, but to Grossfeld, they were necessary.
“Everyone has their own agenda, but my agenda was children. No child should lose an eyeball to war,” said Grossfeld. “War is insane, and I wanted to show that. We’re supposed to be the voice of the people that have no voice.”
Grossfeld’s choice to depict the graphic physical deterioration of international bodies brought a fair amount of criticism upon both himself and The Globe, but the depiction of non-American victims has always been more common than the alternative. The most “famous” photographs of war consist largely of the “other.” An example is “The Terror Of War,” an image depicting a young, naked girl escaping a napalm attack in Vietnam. In contrast, the United States didn’t lift its ban on photographing military coffins — enacted to preserve the dignity and privacy of the dead — until 2009.
“We have a higher standard of tolerance for people in other places, and I think that’s wrong,” said Grossfeld. “More troubling, to me, is the decline of journalism and people with integrity going to these places.”
Pauline Lubens, award-winning photojournalist and professor in the Public Health department at The University of California in Irvine, believes that international victims are awarded less dignity than Americans. Before entering the world of academia, Lubens spent time documenting refugee life in Iraq. After an extensive career as a photographer, Lubens finds that it is easier to dehumanize foreigners than U.S. citizens. In the rare instances that Americans have been exposed to the turmoil of their own people, action has been taken.
“The Vietnam war ended because the American public was tired of seeing American soldiers dying on television news,” said Lubens. “It was the beatings on Bloody Sunday that made people say ‘Oh, I guess we should support civil rights.’”
After experiencing combat first-hand, Lubens decided to dedicate her life to studying the psychological impact of war on veterans and their families. She has recently focused her research on the grief of soldiers who have lost friends in combat or to suicide.
“I understand that this can be psychologically harmful for people. But being the victim of war or being the victim of police brutality is also psychologically harming,” said Lubens. “War is nasty stuff. If you want to send people to war, you better see what you’re supporting.”
According to some experts, the Boston Marathon bombing of 2013 marked a shift in the way American victims were portrayed in the media. Dana Garfin, psychologist and professor in the Department of Community Health Sciences at the University of California in Los Angeles, has conducted thorough research on the photographs and videos taken that day.
“It was one of the more highly televised events since 9/11; the next big thing,” said Garfin as she discussed the impact of the attack. “The images were very shocking, something that wasn’t as much in the public domain as it is now.”
Photojournalist and Pulitzer Prize finalist John Tlumacki captured the most notable images from the Boston Marathon bombing. Hired at Boston Globe in 1983 and assigned to the Boston Marathon beat soon after, Tlumacki was no stranger to the finish line when the bombs went off. His photographs of the 2013 race depicted frenzied police officers and wounded runners in their blood-soaked surroundings.
“I didn’t know who they were. I didn’t know if they lived or died,” said Tlumacki while discussing the victims in his images. “My initial reaction, believe it or not, was just to put the camera to my face and start shooting.”
Tlumacki’s photos were not embraced by all. Some questioned his motives for taking them in the first place, others wondered why he didn’t put down his camera to help the wounded. A Boston police officer pulled Tlumacki aside in the chaos to advise him against exploiting the situation.
However, Tlumacki stands by his decision to show the uncensored version of the attack. His duty as a journalist is to be the eyes of the public, and Tlumacki doesn’t doubt he did just that.
“I played a role at that event, whether it was a good or a bad role,” said Tlumacki. “I played a role that was important in history and was important to that event to document what terrorism did to everybody there.”
Tlumacki distinguishes between the use of graphic images for a cause and the use of graphic images for shock. Decades of photojournalism have helped him understand which events are worth publishing and which do not belong before the public eye. For example, Tlumacki chose not to release any photographs of Krystle Campbell, a 29-year-old Massachusetts native who did not survive the bombing.
“It’s the fine line of watching somebody die in front of you,” said Tlumacki. “What does that prove? It’s just a personal moment of tragedy, you know? Somebody in a horrific state.”
Although graphic images like the work of Grossfeld and Tlumacki may raise awareness, a number of psychologists wonder if the psychological consequences of traumatic visuals outweigh the societal benefits. Psychologist Dana Garfin recently published research on the psychological effects of traumatic visuals in the media. Garfin’s study compared individuals who had physically experienced the Boston Marathon bombing to individuals whose exposure consisted only of television, radio, print, online and social media coverage. She found that regardless of who had direct exposure to the bombing itself, the more media exposure, the more acute stress was reported.
“People who recorded the highest level of media exposure reported higher early PTSD symptoms, even compared to people who were actually at the event,” said Garfin. “[They] had more distress and more functional impairment, which is difficulty in interpersonal relationships and social and occupational functioning.”
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder requires exposure to a traumatic event and specifically “a threat to life.” The human negativity bias works to protect us from threats by encoding each negative event in order to avoid similar incidents in the future. However, if you are watching a video or observing an image of someone who is dying or injured, your brain does not automatically process it differently than it would a real-life event.
“There’s data supporting the neuro-biological processes can be similar,” said Garfin. “I think that’s why those images are particularly disturbing — because our brain encodes them in the same way [it would] a threat that you see in person.”
The rapidly expanding world of social media does little to help this notion. Devices like smartphones encourage users to stay connected to the outside world 24/7, and unlike the physical restrictions of a television, smartphones travel anywhere and everywhere. According to the 2023 Digital Global Overview Report, scrolling through TikTok in the bathroom and snapchatting friends from bed amounts to a daily screen time of over seven hours for the average U.S. citizen. In Garfin’s study, evidence of physiological distress was found after just four.
“Some data actually shows that [viewing a graphic visual on a phone] is associated with more distress than watching it on a TV,” said Garfin. “You’re watching the same thing over and over again. You’re seeing cooking videos, now it’s the Boston Marathon bombing, now it’s a puppy.”
Easy and continuous access to social media paired with rapid sharing among friends and followers perpetuates the ultimate online power of the 21st century: the viral video. A viral video is eight minutes of George Floyd’s neck being crushed by the police, and a viral video is a kid pouring flour into a hairdryer to prank his mom. A viral video can make its way from China to Argentina faster than the speed of light, and unfortunately for Mandy McGowan and her overdose, a viral video can plague those involved for years to come.
“[The video] is everywhere, on all these documentaries on Netflix and Prime Video,” said McGowan. “It’s just horrible because my kids have to see that. My kids are attached to the stigma.”
And McGowan certainly struggled with publicization of her darkest moment. Her kids were forcefully removed by child services. She repeatedly committed herself into hospitals for fear of ending her own life. For a while, McGowan couldn’t even make eye contact with people. She wouldn’t take — or be in — photos, and the mere sight of a camera made her blood run cold. But slowly, McGowan’s life started to fall back into place. A rehabilitation center reached out with the offer of a free stay. She got sober, started working, and began the process of getting her kids back.
“That video saved my life,” said McGowan. “If it didn’t happen, I’d probably be dead. My kids would have had to find my dead body.”
When former Police Chief James Fitzpatrick decided to release McGowan’s video, he wasn’t thinking about shame or discipline. Fitzpatrick was thinking about the listless bodies to which he administers Narcan on a daily basis. Society may be aware of the death rates, but to the former chief, police officers and medical personnel are some of the only people who understand the sheer number of individuals affected by the opioid epidemic.
“I thought it might be an opportunity for some public information. It was graphic because of that poor kid, and that really shocks people, so you’d hope that would raise some awareness,” said Fitzpatrick. “It sounds like a very tough medicine, but it’s what you have to do. It’s all I have.”
Born into a family with a long history of drug abuse, Fitzpatrick understands the reality of addiction. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and as a professional who does not get to participate in the rehabilitation of those he arrests, Fitzpatrick wanted to give McGowan the best chance he could.
“It’s not about punishment, it’s about looking at where you’re at,” said Fitzpatrick. “You’ve got to get to a better place, and sometimes it works, but sometimes it doesn’t.
The rise of the smartphone has consequently dropped a very important tool into the hands of users: the camera. Financial expenses and lack of skill are no longer deterring people from becoming photographers, and the accessibility that regular civilians have results in footage that otherwise would never have been seen.
“If you’re on TikTok and something’s happening right now, you’re going to immediately see active, live feeds from 20 people’s perspectives,” said Jenna Miller, as she sat on a park bench in the Boston Common. “You can see in real time the [events] that are happening and their immediate aftermath.”
The competition to acquire and distribute these exclusive visuals becomes more fierce as a greater number of people become “citizen journalists.” At the Lawrence Police Department, Fitzpatrick is constantly on the phone with news outlets begging him to release specific images or videos to the public. When Police Departments do publicize content, journalists are able to publish it without paying or crediting the original owner.
“It’s going to be on blast for about a week if you’re lucky — if it even lasts that long,” said Fitzpatrick. “And then, it’s on to the next thing.”
The ability for anyone to document anything has had lasting negative effects on the journalists who are working to report the truth. While legitimate news organizations value ethical, factually accurate reporting, the average smartphone user is accountable to no one. Grossfeld assumes that the motivations behind many viral photos and videos lie in the desire for exorbitant views, likes and shares.
“Everyone’s a photographer now,” said Grossfeld. “They’re just looking for the cheapest picture.”
The decline of journalism’s reputation has made it much more difficult for working journalists to gain access to the areas they have historically occupied. Twenty years ago, Grossfeld was secretly “shooting from the hip” while a prison official let him walk the penitentiary halls. Now, Grossfeld says those same officials would be too skeptical to let him anywhere near their prison.
“Everything’s set up between layers of PR or bureaucracy now, so you won’t be able to get what you were able to get,” said Grossfeld. “It’s a shit-show of trying to get access and then what to do with it once you’ve got it.”
Regardless of Grossfeld’s distress, access to technology may be steering journalism toward what it has always strived to do: tell the truth. For the first time, the average citizen has input. Social media algorithms provide a platform where the smallest voices can be heard, and although the lack of regulation can be worrisome, at least people feel that they can make a change.
“Even though everyone thinks they’re a photographer now, somebody is going to get something and [the bad guys] are going to get in trouble,” said Grossfeld. “They’re going to be accountable.”
Regardless of who is accountable, a lingering, unanswered question remains — who pays the price?
Lubens acknowledges that the media thrust into the public eye may indeed be psychologically disturbing. “But sometimes people have to be psychologically disturbed to take action,” she said. “You don’t have to be a photojournalist to capture this stuff, all you need is an iPhone and some courage.”