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The above photo is of the last moments of a cow’s life. After the morning newspaper in Danville, Pa. (map) ran this photo, several readers called in to complain and threatened to cancel their subscriptions. Here’s the :
Media around the world grapple with decisions about when to publish graphic images. These include the aftermath of terrorist attacks and images of war. Photos have power that words cannot match. Decisions about publishing disturbing photos are never taken lightly. Shock value alone does not justify publication.
Wednesday, The Daily Item published a photograph of a police officer shooting one of two cows that had escaped from a trailer.
Backstory: Two cows escaped from a trailer. Cops shot them to death because they were going to be hamburgers anyway and nobody cares about cows. Also, there were no herding dogs in Danville.
Paper photog Robert Inglis got a good shot of the cow execution and editor Len Ingrassia ran it on Page 1. (Of course you run it on Page 1. You’re in Danville, Pennsylvania. Or, rather, in neighboring Sunbury.)
Ingrassia also edits the afternoon paper, the Danville News, and said he explained the value in publishing the photo to the 36 complainers or so. Why no uproar about, well, actually killing the cows?
The Web version of the story had received no reader comments as of 3 p.m. Wednesday and Bowman said the shooting itself had received little local opposition in the community because the cows appeared to be more dangerous than people believed. He said they had knocked over their owner and had been running free near a middle school. “I don’t know how many more options they had,” he said.
Police also had received permission from the owner to kill the cows, editors said, adding that they were on their way to be auctioned for slaughter anyway.
Life or death situation, pretty much.
Cow Flipping: Animal Shooting Photo Draws Complaints [Editor & Publisher]
Graphic photos should show context [Daily Item]
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Don’t kid yourself. Given the chance that cow would eat you and everyone you care about.
“If a cow had the chance, he’d eat you and everyone you cared about”
It must have been very frightening for the officer to be stared down by that cow before he shot him.
No surprise, the cow is black. The white face didnt fool the cop.
Hey, my grandmom was from Danville. Stop hatin’
Oh, My God! The cows did NOT need to be shot. For heavens sake have we become so complacent that we are affraid of cows? Most kids nowadays don’t even know where food comes from. Did the officer just want to kill the cows and get his name in the local paper? As for showing the picture it just goes to show the world how unecessary the killing was, what has society come too? So we should just kill everything that is running loose? We make tranquilizers for a reason, and given enough time the cows would have settled down if everyone would have just stopped chasing them and that is just plain common sense. I am glad that I don’t live there, I would have been embarrassed to see my local authorities act so nonchalant about killing. After all aren’t they trained to act in a calm, cool and collect manner? Who is to say that next time it won’t be a human? You can justify all you want but it was obviously a senseless and unecessary killing and I hope that it is never repeated again!!!
I think it was a necessary killing. Those cows were a menace to society.
This may be our generation’s version of the famous Vietnam execution picture.
http://www.abc.net.au/southwestwa/stories/Execution_m931614.jpg