Severed head (wasRe: [WikiEN-l] Offensive photos policy)

Wed May 12 23:02:42 UTC 2004

Mark Richards wrote:

>I am unconvinced that a photo of this nature adds
>anything to the article, or will remain that
>newsworthy. The incident is tragic, and documenting it
>is important, but a graphic picture of a severed head?
>Why?
>  
>
Well, the same could be said of many pictures.  We could say "he was 
beheaded", or we could illustrate it, or we could do both.  I see it as 
fairly similar to the Abu Ghraib pictures, where technically speaking we 
could convey the same information with words (we could describe what 
exactly is going on in the pictures instead of showing them), but that 
serves as a somewhat euphemistic substitute for showing the actual 
images.  I do think it's okay to do that with the severed head though, 
but still include a link to the image.

This isn't the only image of a dead person on Wikipedia, for what it's 
worth.  There's a fairly close-up and easily-identifiable photograph of 
John F. Kennedy's corpse on that page, and a photograph on Abu Ghraib of 
a prisoners' corpse packed in ice, with a face only slightly obscured by 
a bandage.

-Mark