Nobody had to see Alison Parker’s terror as she faced death
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Version 0 of 1. “This is your life – BE A HERO, goes a slogan for GoPro, the best-known brand of wearable video camera, with which millions are now filming what are often humdrum feats. The devices have already produced countless sports videos, which are then posted online by, for example, proud mountain bikers, sometimes with uplifting musical soundtracks. Also, of course, the cameras have proved a boon for commuting cyclists who may want to record, for legal purposes, their persecution by disinhibited motorists and pedestrians – usually unarmed, thank goodness – who shove them into passing traffic. But in the US, land of the home armoury, it was only a matter of time before GoPro or similar technology struck an intending assassin as the perfect way to make a stand-out, professional-quality contribution to that country’s history of spree killing. In the case of Vester Lee Flanagan, he added a sensational, if carefully planned twist, by filming his murders on live TV. His personal triumph – the mortal suffering of his victims, produced and directed by the murderer himself – would thus be immortalised from two people’s vantage points, or POVs. Perhaps he rehearsed beforehand, to ensure that his gun, as well as his victims, would, as the Sun newspaper recorded, linger in shot, unseen by his targets, before being fired. Of course, the one unpredictable element in this scrupulously staged carnage was the potential limit to immersive media voyeurism. Would more traditional editors collaborate, unstintingly, with his project? Ensure that his name would live on in assassination history, along with the Virginia Tech murderer he admired, and with the German pilot who said: “One day I will do something that will change the whole system, and then all will know my name and remember it.” He could certainly rely on social media for global promulgation of his snuff film, the bloodier the better – assuming Isis did not, by some misfortune, present the world with one of its spectaculars, or some new form of torture, on the same day. As it turned out, much of the media obliged. And why should they not, you could argue, given past publication of many a spree killer’s manifesto or illustrated narrative of grievance or greatness. From the British necrophile and show-off Dennis Nilsen, with his repulsive sketches, to the strutting murderer of holidaying children, Anders Breivik, poster of absurd photoshopped self-portraits, murderers have found a ready market for their promotional work. Sometimes, the interest purports to be scholarly; more often, the voyeurism is as aimless, and as grubby, as that which inspired a new Jack the Ripper museum. Years of study of career murderers, their habits and motivation, has, after all, proved notably unhelpful in spotting future perpetrators. Easy access to guns, on the other hand, can prove remarkably telling when assessing the frequency with which, say, bullied and inadequate-feeling outcasts will successfully exact revenge on the blameless. As CNN has reported, in the period between 1966 and 2012, when the US had 5% of the word’s population, it had 31% of all public mass shootings. Between 2011 and 2014, the incidence of mass shootings rose to one every 64 days, a phenomenon some have ascribed to copycat behaviour. In fact, US public shootings are now so utterly commonplace that many questioned the sense of proportion, as well as the decency, of newspapers that, as Flanagan must have hoped, ranked the killing of two regional journalists above all other global news. And outside America perhaps his crime is less significant, in itself, than its exposure of the willingness of reputable newspapers to disseminate – so prominently that they could not be missed – photographs of Alison Parker’s final moments, as supplied by her killer. Even if helping Flanagan achieve his vanity script were not, by itself, inexcusable, it is hard to see how this random homicide, unlike certain subjects of execution photography (Kennedy, Robert Capa’s falling soldier, death in the trenches have all been knowledgeably cited), could be said to be so illuminating as to deny Parker’s claim to respect and compassion. But the vigour with which some media experts defended dissemination of Flanagan’s snuff debut will surely encourage the armed, carrying cameras and like-minded, to believe that, with the help of appreciative news organisations, they could build on his work. Its publication was a question of taste, it was said, as if this dealt with questions of heartlessness and irresponsibility. Dehumanising the dead? Just a question of taste. Ditto facilitating murderous narcissism, ditto glamorising violence, ditto condoning Isis norms. For those anxious about the spread of trigger warnings, I suppose, it is reassuring to find so many editors resolutely unmoved by consideration for the feelings of passing non-snuff enthusiasts and the possible impact on children of a photograph of an actual dying woman. Necessarily, since they were on front pages, photographs of Parker came unappended by “warning, graphic material” notices with which a website such as the Daily Mail caringly fences off hideous scenes it is unwilling to obliterate altogether (unlike the word fuck), such as any tragedy involving elephants, or the latest Isis atrocity. As for the victims of public horrors, discussion of their interests, as in the case of Ahmed Merabet, the French policeman seen murdered in a video of the Charlie Hebdo attack, has had notably little impact on editorial standards. “How dare you take that video and broadcast it?” Merabet’s brother, Malek, asked journalists. “I heard his voice. I recognised him. I saw him get slaughtered and I hear him get slaughtered every day.” The invariable response from publishers to such complaints and their justification for implicitly collaborating with murderers, is: resistance is futile. Sod values. With the internet, the argument goes, people will see it anyway. If respect for the dying appears to have declined since 2011, when the BBC agonised about Terry Pratchett’s film of a man taking his life at Dignitas, it is more becoming, of course, for editors to blame this on the internet’s contagious disgustingness, as opposed to their own willingness to conform. But even the most promiscuous deployers of this argument are unlikely to be in earnest. Would they show stills of the slaughter of children and their parents if an assassin successfully GoPro’d a train massacre, then uploaded footage where anyone could find it? There are limits. Most newspapers and websites do not embrace indecency because any schoolkid can now find pornography, or circulate abject conspiracy theories because they, too, are doing the internet rounds. Something, thankfully, also stops them from endlessly replaying the fall of the Twin Towers, from acting, by broadcasting its every atrocity, as an Isis recruiting officer. In fact, the accessibility of such material, for those who want to see it, should mean that news organisations are not so much powerless to maintain standards as empowered to edit, without being accused of sanitising or censoring the news. Nobody needed to witness the terror on the face of Alison Parker. To show it was to let Flanagan edit your front page. |