Journalistic Ethics at the New York Post

The man in the picture has his back to the camera. He's desperately clawing at a subway platform, looking right at the train that's bearing down on him as he stands on the tracks.

It's a terrifying, heart-wrenching image, and it's generating a lot of criticism for the newspaper that used it on its front page -- the salty, sensational New York Post.

Why didn't the photographer help? Why did the newspaper publish the photo?

. . .

Media observers wondered Tuesday if the newspaper had gone too far this time.

"Even if you accept that that photographer and other bystanders did everything they could to try to save the man, it's a separate question of what the Post should have done with that photo," Jeff Sonderman, a fellow at journalism think tank the Poynter Institute, wrote on the organization's website. "All journalists we've seen talking about it online concluded the Post was wrong to use the photo, especially on its front page."

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