Nodar Kumaritashvili, and epic fucking fail
Okay, so I live-blogged the Vancouver Olympics Opening Ceremonies, only I haven't cleaned up the post and published due to both the subsequent Olympics coverage eating my life (despite said coverage by NBC sucking unwashed ass) and engaging in my official pastime of procrastinating via World of Warcraft. I plan to get the publishing done today, assuming I can keep my mouse away from the Warcraft icon on my desktop. But first, I would like to rant nuke from orbit discuss the death of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili.
I first heard about this tragedy on Twitter a few hours before the Opening Ceremonies were due to start, and for reasons I haven't really been able to put a finger on, it's affected me pretty strongly. However, I'm going to go out on a limb and poke a finger at the fact that NBC felt the need to air complete footage of Nodar's accident in front of God and everybody with little to no warning. I say that because the video was up on NBC's Olympics website for the entire world to click on, and while Brian Williams gave a perfunctory warning before the footage was aired on Nightly News, the website had none. After that first showing, no more warnings were given. I understand other networks and local stations did the same thing. This left me incredibly upset and disgusted. The footage would have been cringeworthy enough without showing Nodar's impact on the steel beam, and knowing that that impact killed him just made it worse. I won't easily forget the sight of how fast he stopped flying through the air. It makes my heart hurt just thinking about it.
Then, there were the Huffington Post pictures. I was following the #olympics trending topic on Twitter during the Opening Ceremonies and saw a tweet where someone was flaming the Post as being the lowest of the low, with a link included. Curious, I clicked on the link, and then immediately wished I hadn't. NBC's picture slideshow of the accident, while being awful enough with its second-by-second replay of the crash, had included shots of paramedics working on Nodar, but none of them had shown his face. The Post's pictures? Did. I almost threw up. His face wasn't mangled--it wasn't graphic in that respect--it was just graphic for the blood on his face and knowing how it got there and why. And his eyes.
My description of my ire at the media would end there, but Yahoo! Sports just landed themselves on my shit list about an hour ago. They, too, have a slideshow of photos related to the story and really, I should have known better. But I've been following news articles because I want to know how the fallout over the accident goes. So, I clicked. Slideshows don't give any warning, so I went from a photo of Nodar's casket being carried through his hometown to a fucking open casket photo. I literally gasped out loud and hit the "page down" button as fast as my finger could reach it.
So I know the news shows accident footage all the time, and we have programs like Most Shocking, and photos of dead people aren't exactly uncommon in the media these days either. Deaths make news, sports spills can make for jaw-dropping television and oftentimes those photos of death are necessary to document events--like the earthquake in Haiti. But I am of the very firm opinion that Nodar Kumaritashvili's death does not fit the bill for any of that. Accident footage is shown, yes, but not footage in which you can see the person die. You watch shows like Most Shocking knowing that there were no fatalities as a result of the incidents shown. And photos of Nodar's unseeing eyes, not to mention his dead body, were not necessary to document anything. It was a sporting accident, not genocide in Rwanda. I can understand taking photos of the accident and its aftermath, because I understand as a photographer you're trained to keep clicking no matter what, but I don't believe they should have been released to the public. As for the open casket photos? If someone had shown up at my brother's funeral with a camera, I would not have been responsible for my actions. That is gross indecency, disrespectful to the extreme. Let his family and friends grieve in peace without shoving a fucking lens in their faces.
This entire tirade of mine probably doesn't read smoothly, but I seriously can't wrap my head very well around how disgusted I am at the media for their general handling of this story. At the very least, I hope it reads as sincere. I genuinely feel awful for Nodar's family, friends, and fellow athletes, and I wish I could say I hope they find comfort and mean it, but I know that sometimes, comfort just can't be found.
I first heard about this tragedy on Twitter a few hours before the Opening Ceremonies were due to start, and for reasons I haven't really been able to put a finger on, it's affected me pretty strongly. However, I'm going to go out on a limb and poke a finger at the fact that NBC felt the need to air complete footage of Nodar's accident in front of God and everybody with little to no warning. I say that because the video was up on NBC's Olympics website for the entire world to click on, and while Brian Williams gave a perfunctory warning before the footage was aired on Nightly News, the website had none. After that first showing, no more warnings were given. I understand other networks and local stations did the same thing. This left me incredibly upset and disgusted. The footage would have been cringeworthy enough without showing Nodar's impact on the steel beam, and knowing that that impact killed him just made it worse. I won't easily forget the sight of how fast he stopped flying through the air. It makes my heart hurt just thinking about it.
Then, there were the Huffington Post pictures. I was following the #olympics trending topic on Twitter during the Opening Ceremonies and saw a tweet where someone was flaming the Post as being the lowest of the low, with a link included. Curious, I clicked on the link, and then immediately wished I hadn't. NBC's picture slideshow of the accident, while being awful enough with its second-by-second replay of the crash, had included shots of paramedics working on Nodar, but none of them had shown his face. The Post's pictures? Did. I almost threw up. His face wasn't mangled--it wasn't graphic in that respect--it was just graphic for the blood on his face and knowing how it got there and why. And his eyes.
My description of my ire at the media would end there, but Yahoo! Sports just landed themselves on my shit list about an hour ago. They, too, have a slideshow of photos related to the story and really, I should have known better. But I've been following news articles because I want to know how the fallout over the accident goes. So, I clicked. Slideshows don't give any warning, so I went from a photo of Nodar's casket being carried through his hometown to a fucking open casket photo. I literally gasped out loud and hit the "page down" button as fast as my finger could reach it.
So I know the news shows accident footage all the time, and we have programs like Most Shocking, and photos of dead people aren't exactly uncommon in the media these days either. Deaths make news, sports spills can make for jaw-dropping television and oftentimes those photos of death are necessary to document events--like the earthquake in Haiti. But I am of the very firm opinion that Nodar Kumaritashvili's death does not fit the bill for any of that. Accident footage is shown, yes, but not footage in which you can see the person die. You watch shows like Most Shocking knowing that there were no fatalities as a result of the incidents shown. And photos of Nodar's unseeing eyes, not to mention his dead body, were not necessary to document anything. It was a sporting accident, not genocide in Rwanda. I can understand taking photos of the accident and its aftermath, because I understand as a photographer you're trained to keep clicking no matter what, but I don't believe they should have been released to the public. As for the open casket photos? If someone had shown up at my brother's funeral with a camera, I would not have been responsible for my actions. That is gross indecency, disrespectful to the extreme. Let his family and friends grieve in peace without shoving a fucking lens in their faces.
This entire tirade of mine probably doesn't read smoothly, but I seriously can't wrap my head very well around how disgusted I am at the media for their general handling of this story. At the very least, I hope it reads as sincere. I genuinely feel awful for Nodar's family, friends, and fellow athletes, and I wish I could say I hope they find comfort and mean it, but I know that sometimes, comfort just can't be found.