The thousand words behind the picture
Do you recognize the picture above? It was snapped 20-years-ago today and went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for spot news photography.
The picture captures the moment St. Louis Firefighter Adam Long pulled 2-year-old Patricia Pettus from a burning home and tried to breath life into her. The little girl died six-days later.
Michael Schwartzberg, who takes pictures and video for the Pikesville Volunteer Fire Company that we regularly run at STATter 911, sent me an article that ran today in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch detailing the story behind the picture.
Elizabethe Holland writes about the bond that developed between Long, now a battalion chief at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport, and photographer Ron Olshwanger. Olshwanger was then, and is now, a director of the Creve Coeur Fire Protection District who takes pictures in his spare time.
It is a beautiful story about a picture that touched a lot of lives. Click here to read it.
It has some connections to the story we ran a-year-ago about Arnold Hardy who died on December 5, 2007, which was two days before the 61st anniversary of the famous fire picture he took. Hardy was the first amateur to win the Pulitzer Prize for his photo of a woman jumping from the burning Winecoff Hotel in Atlanta.
People who know me well, or who are regular readers of STATter 911, know what is coming next about these pictures. It’s the issue I brought up to Michael Schwartzberg this evening: Would these and should these pictures be run today in our papers, on TV and on the web?
For much of the 20th century this was the window the public had to view the heroic actions of firefighters. Pictures like these showed the reality of what it is you do and the toll fire takes on the lives of the innocent. Think of Stanley Forman’s pictures from Boston in 1975 (another Pulitzer winner) of the woman and child falling from a broken fire escape on Marlborough Street. Or Charles Porter’s shot of firefighter Chris Fields cradling Baylee Almon in his arms after the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 (yes, another Pulitzer winner).
From my experience in the news business, what happened starting in the late 1980s and early 1990s, is that we began sanitizing the news. We have often been aided and abetted by many of you in public safety.
For better or for worse, cries that is is too graphic and you are violating someone’s privacy took over the decision making process at your end and my end. Often news photographers are held back by police and firefighters so they don’t see things people think we shouldn’t see.
I have mentioned this before, but take a look at the YouTube video at the bottom of this page. It is a poor quality version of video shot by my late friend Sheldon Levy. What was edited from the story is while DC firefighters and EMS workers were pulling children from a burning home on Missouri Avenue, NW in 1988, a police officer kept trying to get in front of Sheldon’s lens to stop him from shooting. By the way, a little girl who was revived from this fire now works as a TV reporter in Maryland.
I truly understand the arguments on both sides of this issue. The last time I brought up this topic on STATter 911, after Hong Kong TV showed a dead firefighter, I was surprised to see most of the comments came from firefighters who believe we clean things up too much and don’t show the public what it’s really like. I am encouraged by those thoughts.
I haven’t looked at all the news coverage, but did any newspaper or TV station show Michelle Dosso holding up the morgue pictures of her children in a Philadelphia church as she made a plea for everyone to have working smoke alarms?
I’d be surprised if they did. The outcry from the public if you ran something like that, or even the St. Louis picture of 20-years-ago, would likely be immense and not what most newsrooms of today would choose to face.
So, are we better or worse for are modern version of reality? As I have said many times before, you be the judge.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1ZfN-lvNNE&hl=en&fs=1]
