Need to know versus would like to know.

[andy-hughes]

This morning, a national tabloid has a large picture showing the bath in which Whitney Houston died, confirming that the water is still in it, and her body had been removed moments before.

Personally speaking, all I need to know is that Ms Houston expired in a bath - I have absolutely no need what ever to see an image of said bath, with or without the water contained within.

Since it appears I am out of step with media thinking - can anyone advise me what is the purpose of placing this image? is any serious interest served, or is it simply tragic titilation, and new depths (pardon the pun!) of tabloid operation?

[squarebear]

Who me?

I don't know the guy and again, I am sure it is pretty upsetting for anybody who does know him but soldiers die in war and I am unaffected by this image.

[anotheoldgit]

sp1814

Exactly my sentiments SP,

But I will go a step further, what really annoys me is when these TV News Channels, go to the expense of flying their news crews out thousands of miles, just for the newscaster to stand in front of a particular back-drop talking into a camera.

They then have the nerve to call him or her "our Middle East Correspondent" for example.

Most of the time they could just use generally available footage and they could make their remarks on it, in the studio.

[anotheoldgit]

Sorry Lottie didn't see your post.

[anotheoldgit]

One could say why publish photos in newspapers at all?

Come to that why have television news reports, all we need is the audio.

[jno]

exploitative titillation.

jake, a fairer comparison would be a photo from the same spot the next day labelled "Place where soldier was shot". Nobody would be interested, because the soldier wasn't a singer. What's going on here, I think, is a mixture of morbidity and celebrity: it has to be both. Whitney's bath water from the day before, in which she didn't die, would be of interest only to nuts. Likewise bath water in which a nobody died wouldn't make it into the papers. You've got to have both before the tabloid buys your picture.

Regarding reports in the snow: that's jut TV trying to earn its keep by demonstrating that it's not radio. TV are footage fetishists.

[anotheoldgit]

Makes one wonder if the LA Beverly Hilton Hotel, will refurbish the suite in which Whitney died, who would wish to take a bath in that very same bath?

I know that I wouldn't.

[jno]

many would, aog

http://www.paranormal...x.php?showtopic=29933

[Gromit]

Slightly off topic. Today's Daily Mail explains this sad event with the headline:

"Whitney's 'drug binges numbed the pain of being gay'"

[sp1814]

AOG

I think it's different with foreign correspondants, in that the major UK news agencies will have staff and freelance correspondants with local contact who are then in a position to cover breaking stories, but also work on investigative streams, and actually break stories themselves.

[jake-the-peg]

I think you've hit the nail on the head here JNO - the soldier wasn't a celebrity.

I think that tels us something about our attitudes to such pictures.

As it happens this picture was not staged, the man has in recent years been identified and his date of death confirmed with his widow.

It is an iconic photograph and yet in a way does not feel as intrusive or voyeuristic as it would had the victim been a celebrity.

I think our feelings of disgust at voyeurism is heightened by the celebrity of the victim - we want to remember them the way we do and not have the ugly facts of their deaths intrude on our memories.

Would the picture of the bath have provoked the same feelings of distaste if it had been an anonymous person who died in it?

Maybe if we feel disgust we should examine why we feel that way before lashing out at those who have provoked that feeling in us

[Ankou]

the bathtub in the lindsay hawker case was included in media outputs.

[Gromit]

It would appear that the Daily Mail has 3 reporters camped outside the Jordanian home of Adu Qatada because his mum lives there.

In this link she is kindly giving them refreshments.

http://www.dailymail....ted-jail-parents.html

[jno]

perhaps the tea will numb the pain of being Mail reporters?

[ludwig]

To the people who say they don't need to see someone in a field or downing street or wherever..

If a news program was introduced featuring people just describing things in a studio, with no seemingly pointless footage of anonymous fat people walking down the street or binge drinkers fighting, or people standing in fields it would be like watching paint dry. Its viewing figures would be zero in a very short space of time.

There's no real point to alot of the visuals in a news bulletin except to make the presentation more interesting. They have a story about the NHS, so they accompany it with some random footage of a nurse pushing a trolley around or someone having an x-ray. It adds no information, but no-one would watch it otherwise.