Photo abuse by media

The first thing that I wondered after I visited the homepage of Minivan News today -- and after I read the attention-grabbing headline of "Mother arrested for sexually abusing her son" -- was if the woman and the child in the accompanying picture were really the people the article is referring. The woman in the picture is not facing the camera and cannot be identified but the child is facing the camera and can be clearly identified. It took me a few seconds to realize that they were not in anyway linked to the article.



Back in the 1990s the local daily Aafathis published a photo of two of my close friends while they were in a dhoni, on a fishing trip or while they were going for a picnic. They were in school back then and the people on the dhoni were mostly their classmates. A teacher was accompanying them. The article was referring to so-called bad boys (viyaa nudhaa kudhin or rogue children) and the photo had a caption to imply that the boys in the photo were indeed spoiled brats.

We now have freedom of expression but we have a long way to go before our newspapers and magazines reach the moral high ground.