Houla massacre: who decides what is too shocking to print?
A baby girl with half her skull hacked away; a young boy “with the back of his head lopped like a boiled egg”; a pretty girl with, “above her right eye, a large bloody bullet hole surrounded by a mess of flesh and bone”. These pictures, and many more like them, “were far too shocking to print in the Times, though our failure to do so spares the Assad regime”.
Thus, Martin Fletcher in his brilliant front page report on “The Tipping Point” for western revulsion over the Houla massacre in Syria last week – and an inevitable question. What is far too shocking to print? Does one tasteful RIP shot of a murdered toddler do the job?
To read more: ►http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/jun/03/peter-preston-houla-massacre-photographs?CMP=twt_gu