Newsweek and The Atlantic, shame on you.
How far removed from the real world do you have to be to think publishing, with no warning, a graphic image of a dead or dieing dying person covered in blood is fine? Newsweek’s Tumblr even calls the posting of the grotesque image “a necessity in an age of media-driven rumors”.
No, Newsweek, it fucking isn’t. Unless you think your readers are knuckle dragging, celebrity-masturbating, morons. Are your Tumblr followers people unable to understand something without you pushing an image of a corpse in their face?
I can only assume the people in charge of the Tumblr feeds for both Newsweek and The Atlantic live in some corner of an office, detached from the real world in some kind of bubble. The kind of bubble where reason and logic, common sense and common decency become warped by deadlines, hits, spin and hype.
I hate the internet sometimes.
Link here, warning: graphic.
Edit: I should probably point out the reason I name Newsweek and The Atlantic specifically is because they’re the two publications I follow on Tumblr who posted the image.
Edit 2: Newsweek have posted a video of “Muammar Gaddafi’s corpse being kicked through the streets of Sirte”. And I kid you not, they say “We’re posting it because many others have”. That is not a good reason.
Edit 3: The Guardian’s website has the image on its front page. Anyone going online to read the news in the UK will have that image unavoidably shown to them. Am I completely out of touch with what’s acceptable?
