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April 28, 2007

Dear AP Sounding Board members,

As a follow up question to the survey on coverage of the Virginia Tech slayings, we asked panelists about their use of photos of the gunman waving his weapons and his recorded outburst – material he sent to NBC for national broadcasts.

Of the 10 responses, seven said they displayed Cho's photo on page 1 – including two who printed it in small format. Two others chose not to use it, and one printed a version without guns showing. Most Web sites used the multimedia versions via automated providers, including AP.

News values and potential impact on readers factored into decisions, which weren't taken lightly. Three panelists said they got some reader criticism for printing the gunman's photo.

Here are the survey questions, followed by full responses. Many thanks to those who participated.

— Dave Minthorn

Some newspapers prominently displayed on their front pages the disturbing photos that the Virginia tech gunman sent to NBC. Others chose to run the images inside, or not at all.

— How did your newspaper handle it?

— Did your Web sites use the gunman's photos or recordings of his rants?

Tom Eblen, managing editor, Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader:

We used three photos of him on A-1 (the main one of him with two guns, which was on most papers' front pages) and two smaller closeups of him, one of him smiling the other raising a hammer. We also used a picture of two grieving students on the front.

McClatchy Interactive's package on our Web site did not contain any audio or video of him that I recall.

We received about a dozen reader complaints about using the photos on A-1, and I wrote about the decision here on our editors' blog:

http://herald-leader.typepad.com/behind_the_headlines/
2007/04/its_disturbing_.html

Bill Rose, managing editor, The Palm Beach (Fla.) Post:

The Palm Beach Post displayed a large 1A photo of the gunman pointing his gun at the camera. Below that, we ran the photo of the gunman with a gun in each hand pointing to each side, the most used photo of the day.

The day before, we ran mugs of the victims across the top of page 1 and ran more inside the newspaper. On the day we ran the video shots on 1A, we ran the rest of the victims' mugs inside.

Our Web site ran the photo of him holding the two guns out from his sides on the home page and a gallery of the other photos of him on another page. The Web site also used the recording of his rants.

Dave Ledford, executive editor, The News Journal, Wilmington, Del.

In Wilmington, the story was the lead story of the day.

We ran a small shot of Cho Seung-Hui juxtaposed to a bold quote headline from him saying, "When the time came, I did it. I had to."

The lead picture on the page was a shot of a Tech student reading a message board signed by others offering support to the families of the deceased.

Kevin Whitmer, managing editor, enterprise, The Star-Ledger, Newark, N.J.

As you know, the Web decisions are made separately at nj.com. As for the paper, we ran a rather large photo of the gunman on P1. There was much internal debate about the decision and it fell into two camps: Those in favor thought the photo was the most significant news development after the news broke and spoke to his mental state; those opposed to it thought we were glorifying him.

In truth, we were surprised that so many papers did not run the image on P1.

D. Reed Eckhardt, managing editor, Wyoming Tribune-Eagle, Cheyenne:

We displayed it small; we focused on local news on Day 2 of the VT story.

Only what AP offered (for the Web).

Troy Turner, editor, The Daily Times, Farmington, N.M.:

We chose not to run the photos or to run them inside because we instead focused on the emotions being felt on campus, and how that related to several local tragedies we had experienced in our own location. Several teens in the Four Corners area had died from various causes ranging from alcohol drinking to accidents to murder, and the Tech tragedy seemed to be a national exclamation point to our own spate of tragedy.

Running the photo big on front page of the gunman seemed too insensitive given the mood of our readership, so instead, we ran an AP mainbar with art, but used lead art with our own story about the professional advice provided by local counselors we contacted and asked, "What do you tell our community, and what would you tell those at Virginia Tech if you were trying to help them today?" The story was a big hit, making us feel we made the right decision to focus on local connections and shared moods rather than the intense scrutiny of the killer's bio and photo.

(Online) No, other than the routine video provisions that we get in the AP cycle.

Steve Brody, wire editor, Lancaster (Pa.) New Era:

The first day photos of the gunman were available to us, we chose to use two photos of him prominently on the front page, one in which he wields a hammer and another in which he poses in paramilitary-style fatigues. In neither were his guns visible. The thinking of our photo editor and news editor then was that by avoiding the photos that included the guns, we might have "blunted the offensiveness" to some readers, as our news editor told me. Even so, we received some scolding letters. The news value of the photos compelled their use, in some fashion.

As for our Web site, we used some AP material, including video packages. Any photos of the gunman or audio of his rants would have been included in that.

Paul Profeta, news editor, Springfield (Ohio) News-Sun:

At the Springfield News-Sun in Ohio, we redid our lineup on A1 to get the photos in after we saw them on NBC News. The feeling was we needed to get them to our readers. We ran four photos: the photo of the gunman holding two guns was our main shot, with smaller shots of the gunman, the gunman pointing his weapon and him holding a hammer.

We did not use the photos or the recordings on our Web site.

Jana Collier, managing editor, Dayton (Ohio) Daily News:

We did run those photos on our front page, and we put the photos and recordings on our website. At the time we made the decision, we felt like showing the photos and letting people listen to and read his rants were important pieces of understanding the story, of understanding how it happened and why. We did not think it glorified the killer at all. We got a few e-mails and calls, and those calls we got were very passionate and angry. But honestly, we didn't get a lot of calls. Meanwhile, the photos performed very well on the web.

Traci Bauer, managing editor/multimedia & innovation; Dick Moss, local content editor/nights, Rochester (N.Y.) Democrat and Chronicle:

We ran a story inside the A section describing the images and the gunman's rants, but we did not use the photographs. Instead, we chose to focus on the victims of the attack, partly because one of them had strong local connections. I think a case could be made that our readers were able to learn something from the gunman's writings and rants. I'm not sure the same could be said of the photographs.

We used only what the automatic AP feed provided in its coverage. Main headline was among the scrape at the bottom of the homepage.

Dave Minthorn, manager, AP News Administration, coordinates the questions and answers. Newspaper editors wishing to suggest a topic can send an e-mail to Minthorn at dminthorn@ap.org.

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