Images in Crisis response

In today’s culture, we are overwhelmed by uncomfortable images after every well-documented tragedy. In fact, I am so personally used to seeing graphic images that I find I have become numb to them. After some self-reflection, I realize that whenever I watch the news, I expect to see horrific images, and almost view them as a ploy for ratings, and not an actual depiction of actual, horrible events. I believe it is this unfortunate side effect of publishing images of a crisis that has led to the backlash and negative feedback from the public. People do not wish to see an image of a mutilated child if it is only so the news network can boost its ratings. This is unfortunate, because I do not believe that is always the intention of the photographers, or publishers, of these graphic images. For example, the children on page 200, who are smiling while holding a poster with horrific images on it, are not doing anything wrong. They are smiling because someone asked them to say ‘cheese’ before snapping a picture. In fact, the children are actually taking the time to raise money for a tragedy that they became aware of through those very images. The fact that anyone questions the motives behind a set of eight year olds raising money to help others only proves how cold our society has become. This is because the media portrays these images so frequently; they lose their meaning, or worse, are questioned for their motives and authenticity. Any form of media is, unfortunately, very subjective to the author’s bias and opportunity. People, including myself, need to except this and learn to actually look at these images again, instead of passing them off as a hoax or a trick for attention.