Ethics Newsline®

NEW YORK
CBS News encountered blistering criticism last week after airing photographs of a dying Princess Diana, ignoring her family’s pleas and a media industry taboo on displaying the death scene photos.

Princess Diana was killed in a Paris car crash in August 1997, with paparazzi arriving on the scene moments after the accident and snapping pictures that were confiscated by the French police.

Diana’s lover, Dodi al Fayed, and her driver, Henri Paul, also were killed in the crash, which has been blamed on Paul, who investigators concluded was drunk and speeding at the time of the crash.

Western media outlets so far had refrained from showing the death-scene photos, which had remained off-air out of respect for Diana’s family and out of a sense that they added little insight to the circumstances surrounding the accident.

Last week, CBS decided to break ranks and air photocopies of the photos on its primetime show “48 Hours Investigates,” insisting that the act had journalistic merit, reported the Reuters news agency.

The photos were “placed in a journalistic context — an examination of the medical treatment given to Princess Diana just after the crash — and are in no way graphic or exploitative,” the network insisted.

For many observers, such explanations carried no weight, earning condemnations as a crass and careless stunt designed to win viewers, according to several press reports.

Diana’s brother, Earl Charles Spencer, summed up the mood of many, saying his family was “shocked and sickened by CBS’s actions,” reported CNN.

While CBS’s decision earned a lot of attention, most of it came after the fact and little was flattering. The network earned a disappointing third place in its primetime spot that night, reported Reuters.