Copy Old Photos

Negotiating news photo minefields

The retirement on Friday of veteran Bangor Daily News photographer Scott Haskell after more than three decades of outstanding work recording images of everyday life in Maine set me to pondering the photography aspect of putting out a daily newspaper.

Although improved technology has revolutionized the newspaper photography process, as it has so many other endeavors, one thing that technology seems unlikely to change is the potential for grief that can come with the publication of photos.

One does not have to be terribly swift to spot — before publication — the photo that will make the natives grow restless and result in a surge in the volume of letters to the editor. Which is why at most newspapers the decision to publish a controversial photo generally comes only after considerable discussion among editors.

Following the publication by the BDN of a photo at the scene of a fatal accident involving a teenage bicyclist, readers reacted swiftly in condemning the paper’s judgment. Mark Woodward, the paper’s executive editor at the time, wrote a column explaining the paper’s rationale for publication, and — as is often the case in these things — sentiment began to turn.

One reader who wrote to commend the decision to publish the photo said his young son — who had clipped the photo and taped it to the garage wall near his bike — had been taught an invaluable lesson about bicycle safety.

When Vice President Al Gore came to Maine in the wake of the 1998 ice storm that crippled the state for weeks, he was photographed picking up a downed power line in Auburn, thereby undoing decades of power company-sponsored public service announcements about the folly of touching any power line at any time and sabotaging the age-old warning to little kids not to try such a foolhardy stunt at home.

Resulting letters to the editor, although rich in snickering commentary about the vice president’s faux pas, included a fair number speculating as to who was dumber — Gore for picking up the wire or newspaper editors for prominently displaying photos of his klutzy performance on their front pages.

Those types of photographs — of accident scenes, Important People acting irresponsibly, dead game animals strung up with their tongues hanging out, kids playing with fire and so forth — have potential trouble written all over them and can elicit caustic reader reaction. By contrast, when a newspaper blunders into the misidentified species trap in publication of a photograph the reaction is usually less strident.

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