Houla massacre: who decides what is too shocking to print?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/jun/03/peter-preston-houla-massacre-photographs

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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 <em>Times</em>, 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?

And, by happenstance, an answer comes in <em>McCullin</em>, a new film about the searing war photographs Don McCullin took for the <em>Sunday Times </em>and the <em>Observer </em>three and more decades ago.

Don worked in black and white. He never flinched over killings piled high. His view of war was and is that war is so shocking it must be shown whole. And then came a moment when even a preview audience of journalists winced: a young Biafran mother, her breasts hanging loose like empty sacks; a baby in the final stage of death.

Too searing, too dreadful for comfort? Only if your own snug cocoon of ignorance is more important than feeling humanity's pain.