Opinion

Media has no need to dramatise an event that is already fuelled with drama

steve jones headshotDistressing images of coffins being delivered to an Indonesian prison, crosses being made and details of the execution process for nine drug smugglers awaiting the firing squad are gratuitous and tasteless, argues Mumbrella’s Steve Jones.

Overnight we received an email with the subject line: “Offering pics about execution /Death convicts in Nusakambangan Island”, with some examples of the photographer’s work.

“For me these are premium Images and only me and one other print media who take the crosses making,” said the man who had taken the photos showing the names of Bali nine ringleaders Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran being painted on their grave markers.

Certainly most of the Australian media shares the view these ghoulish shots are premium inventory, revelling in every moment leading up to the almost inevitable end to the saga, their death by firing squad.

The email sent to Mumbrella overnight. Click to enlarge.

The email sent to Mumbrella overnight. Click to enlarge.

There can barely be a soul in Australia who is not aware of the fate awaiting the Bali Nine.

We know that this week, possibly in the early hours of tomorrow, the duo who were convicted of drug smuggling almost a decade ago, will be taken to fields on Java’s Nusakambangan island and executed by firing squad.

What we don’t really know is what they, and their families, are going through during their last days. We can try to guess, but frankly it is unimaginable.

Like Schapelle Corby before them, the fate of the nine has kept the nation – and the media – engrossed for 10 years as they slowly, and with increasing desperation, exhausted all the avenues open to them as lawyers sought to stave off the executioner.

And finally here we are, at the end, a terrible, terrifying end to a torturous saga that has been laden with misery, hope – futile as it transpired – and ultimately, death.

And isn’t that knowledge sufficient for us all? Isn’t it enough for readers and viewers to know that the lives of nine people, whose fate we have followed since 2005, will end on Tuesday in a field on what is dubbed “execution island”.

It seems not.

Some hold the belief that we need and want to know as much detail as possible about the manner of the prisoners’ deaths.

Fairfax detailed how the executions will take place

Fairfax detailed how the executions will take place

I read how each victim will be tied to wooden planks and shot through the heart. Furthermore, if the first round of bullets does not kill them, they will be shot in the head.

It’s a truly awful image.

Do we really need to know this level of gruesome, wretched detail, written with as much compassion as if we talking about kangaroo roadkill being put out of its misery.

But it was the image of coffins being delivered to the prison, and of crosses being made, that struck me as particularly tasteless in the rolling media coverage. A hideous, harrowing image that added very little to a story already laced with misery.

It illustrated to me a media somehow revelling in the sheer horror of it all, a deliberate and clumsy attempt to dramatise and heighten an event that just doesn’t need dramatising.

There have been far more explicit images of death and destruction in recent times, both in print, online and on TV, but this felt somehow cold and completely without point or merit. The image of coffins waiting to be filled by the bodies of nine people who, at the time of writing, are still alive was purely designed to invoke shock and horror.

The Sydney Morning Herald itself acknowledged the arrival of the coffins at the prison was harrowing.

“In a further distressing scene, nine coffins were delivered to the police station in Cilacap on Sunday night,” the SMH reported.

Most news outlets have latched onto the crosses and coffins angle

Most news outlets have latched onto the crosses and coffins angle

So why, then, subject readers to such a distressing image, particularly one that is needless. I felt it was gratuitous and tasteless.

Of course it is a way for the media to stretch out the story and keep it rolling for as long as possible, maximising the return on the public interest in these people’s fate, until what seems to be the inevitable happens and they are executed.

That’s nothing new for news media, but in the age of the 24-hour news cycle even the smallest piece of minutiae is fair game to this end.

Maybe we have become desensitised to suffering, a byproduct of the wave of atrocities and natural catastrophes around the world that confront us on an almost daily basis.

In certain circumstances, confrontational images are entirely appropriate. They tell a story that sometimes cannot be articulated sufficiently or with the power of a single image.

However – the explicit details of the execution of nine people and photographs of their coffins – just did not meet that criteria.

  • Steve Jones is chief reporter at Mumbrella
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