I was thinking about our discussion last week in class about the photograph of the soldier at his funeral.
I agree with the photographer and the courts in that it was not an invasion of privacy, etc.
If a family is going to hold a very large public funeral for their son and invite the press to it, there is no way they would believe that no photos of that sort would come out of it. If you want no photos to appear, then don't invite the press.
Or, don't have an open casket. The funeral was attended by (I believe) 1,200 people. I refuse to believe that all of those people honestly truly knew the soldier, and yet they were allowed to get up close and personal with the body as it lay in the casket. Why can't a photographer take a photo of the man and have it published? Now, if the man had been severely disfigured, and the family had still decided to have an open casket (though I don't know who would), I think there might have been more of a decency issue at hand.
I don't know. Things like this bother me. People who invite the press to something and then get mad when the journalists and photographers do their jobs bother me and anger me.
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2 comments:
I agree with what you say. If a family doesn't want any photos of an event to get out then don't invite the press. I also find it hard to believe that the family didn't actually want any photos gettig out. Why invite the press and around 1,200 other people to a funeral and then turn around and sue when a photo gets taken.
I think the court decision upholding the photographer's position, stated the answer pretty clearly:
". . . the district court found that the Turnley Photo was not outrageous. It based its decision on the fact that the photo accurately depicts the exact image that Plaintiffs chose to expose to approximately 1,200 people who attended Sgt. Brinlee’s funeral. The district court also pointed out that Plaintiffs made the decision to have an open casket at the funeral because Sgt. Brinlee’s “body looked fine,” and further found that the mere fact that the photograph was of a deceased person was not enough to constitute outrageous conduct."
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