But in the meantime, it’s important to acknowledge that editors can’t publish photos they don’t have. My experience is that police always attempt to control crime scenes and do their best to keep photographers away. And if the setting of the carnage is outside a building, they try to keep photojournalists out of sight. Photographers can show you only what they can see themselves, unlike reporters, who can re-create scenes based on the testimony of others.
To capture the kinds of images that some would like to see published, photojournalists would need to either be allowed entry to the crime scene—unthinkable for many reasons, in my experience—or arrive on the scene of a shooting before the police. That rarely occurs. It happened only one time I can recall in my 11-year tenure as editor of the Rocky, and we published that stunning photo on the front page as well. It showed the body of a gunman on the floor of an empty, grand hallway at Colorado’s capitol, where he had gone to try to kill the governor…
My view is that editors aren’t generally withholding images that might galvanize the public to take action. They just don’t have them, as hard as some might try to obtain them. If they did, I’m sure some would publish them, as I did. But I worry that’s a decision that could backfire badly. I saw how Columbine seemed to break down a barrier for other similarly inclined killers. I worry that making public photos of obliterated children will motivate others to see how much damage they can cause, will normalize unthinkable violence, and will be used in a hateful way, against the families of the dead or as threats to others. Rather, I would look for photographs that won’t make people turn away, that will hold their gaze.
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