PressEthic

Have you ever seen a movie called "15 Minutes"? It’s basically the story of two psychopaths from Eastern Europe who come to the US to kill a former partner-in-crime. One of them decides he’s going to become a master director, and, using a handheld, home-movie style camera, films all of the murders that the men commit. Of course they are planning on selling the film, plead insanity at their trial, then make millions of dollars from book and movie deals.

At one point in the film, the two men kill the police detective that is out looking for them. The detective is famous, having solved many high-profile cases, and having been featured on a TV news show many times. They film the murder, and then sell the tape to the show that used to feature this cop. They show the film on live television after the detective’s funeral, over the objections of the police and the man’s own family.

The point I am trying to make is that we were talking about this type of thing last class. Would you print the photos of American soldiers captured or killed in Iraq? I think the sticking point for a lot of people was that in the case of soldiers, we need to wait until the family is notified before printing pictures of them being kidnapped. I realize that this case is fictional, but it could happen. In this case, the man was dead; everyone knew he was dead, and that he had been murdered. If the killers are coming to you, asking if you if you wanted an exclusive look at the tape, what do you do? Does decency trump the thought of getting an exclusive that might never come again? If you saw that on TV, would it lower your opinion of the media? Does showing something like this lend legitimacy to the murderers?

I don’t know the answers to questions like this. Watching the movie, I just thought it was an interesting correlation to the discussion we were having in class, with just enough different about it to make it interesting.

Also, as a side-note, the fiancée of the detective was a reporter that always managed to get to his crime scenes before any other journalists. That’s completely unethical – that’s why it’s a movie.