Warning: graphic images ahead
Unfortunate ad placement is a fact of life. I’m sure the page designer would like to claw back this one showing a person with a computer strapped to his back, falling though the air like a parachute jumper. The ad happened to run on Sept. 17, 2001, next to a story about how IT departments were coping with the aftermath of September 11, when real people jumped out of the Twin Towers to keep from burning to death.
How well did my old paper do on the earthquake in Haiti?
I spent 35 years working for The Palm Beach Post. I never went to Haiti myself, but I sent photographers there when I was director of photography. I’m not exaggerating when I say that every shooter came back a changed person.
Lannis Waters, a photographer who had been to Haiti several times was one of the few old-timers to survive the buyouts. I heard a rumor that he was going back, so I turned to The Palm Beach Post web site to see if he had filed anything in the gallery of photos from the devastated island.
This goes beyond insenstive
Cops, journalists, healthcare workers and EMTs use gallows humor to protect us from what we see on a daily basis. We try hard, though, to keep that defense mechanism away from outsiders, who wouldn’t understand.
These advertisements paired with horrific pictures of crushed bodies, maimed children, destroyed homes and incredible human suffering were worse than any caption I ever saw posted on the photo department’s back bulletin board.
SECOND WARNING: GRAPHIC IMAGES AHEAD
I couldn’t decide which was worse
The Jet Blue ad that says, “THIS DAY JUST KEEPS GETTING BETTER” next to a father who has just discovered his 10-month-old daughter in a pile of corpses.
A Palm Beach Post house ad with the headline “SURVIVING THE SQUEEZE” next to a photo of a pair of feet sticking out from under a collapsed hotel.
Another Palm Beach Post house ad headlined, “LOSING YOUR HOME?” next to a photo of the rubble of Haiti’s Presidential Palace.
Airlines used to kill ads
Commercial airlines used to have a mandatory kill in their contracts to keep one of their ads from running on the same day as a plane crash. I’m sure that some of these advertisers would be appalled to see their ads used next to these photos. Under any other circumstances, the juxtapositions would be funny. This isn’t one of them.
My geek son gave this explanation:
A web developement person agreed
Possible solutions?
- Kill the ad feed for a few days?
- Pull the ads out of rotation (some photos must lack ads because they displayed plain black where the ad would have been)
- Run APPROPRIATE house ads detailing how you are covering the event
- Run public service announcements
Technology has come a long way
I’m waiting for a Post response
Gallery of Photos
[Note: Ken Steinhoff’s first published picture was April 18, 1963. He’s worked for papers in four states as a reporter, copy editor, photographer, typesetter and engraver. He was hired as a photographer for The Palm Beach Post and Evening Times Dec. 31, 1972. He was a shooter for three years, promoted to director of photography and spent from 1991 to his retirement in 2008 as telecommunications manager. He wrote this piece as a long-time Palm Beach Post subscriber who remembers when newspapers were accountable for every word they published.]
Ken – As you may recall, I spent a good chunk of my Post career working on the non-print side of the operation. I understand what the Web person is telling you about how the ads are flighted, but I don’t buy that they can’t pull their house ads and substitute with something else. Like you suggested a “how you can help” campaign would be much more appropriate. If they can’t turn those graphics around and get them trafficked this quickly, then there are still some very scary ghosts in the Post Web machine…
Mark Kate,
I understand that point, too. There are some strange Google ads that pop up on my blogs.
I remember doing a piece on road rage only to have ads for Hummers and monster SUVS run next to it.
Old-time, small-town papers might not have been objective, might have had an axe to grind and might have been bad in a whole raft of ways, but the publisher had his finger on every word that was printed.
When an editor told me right after I was hired, “The publisher’s policy is that he never wants to see [a local contractor’s] name in the paper unless he’s being indicted for something, I made darned sure his name never appeared.
If Freedom of the Press belongs to he (she) who owns one and you’ve given up control of your print product and you can’t control the web content, then where does that leave us?
Fairness update: It’s 4:30 on Friday afternoon and I haven’t received a response to a message I sent to three Post execs this morning.
One of the messages just bounced as being undeliverable. That’s understandable because I had fat-fingered his address. He couldn’t be expected to respond to something he hadn’t received.
I’ll post an update if / when I hear from anyone else.
[…] The photos are graphic and not the kind of thing that I want to put here. I have screen captures of the photos and ads on this journalism site, if you want to see something e… […]
Today’s ads include a woman in a T-shirt from Snorgtees.com that says “Bacon makes everything better.”
And by this photo “Caption: Timothy Murphy of the New York City Search and Rescue Task Force peers into a hole on the top floor of a collapsed technical college in Port-au-Prince looking for survivors who may be trapped.” an ad for Florida prepaid college plans.
It’s odd – I know CNN.com runs ads next to their top news coverage, and the ads look like the same size. But on CNN.com they are easy to ignore, while in the slideshow popup on PalmBeachPost.com they are more noticeable. That may be good for advertisers (unless there is a public backlash). It’s still disturbing.
Update January 22, 2010: no one from The Post gave me the courtesy of a reply, but I noticed that the ads have been replaced with Palm Beach Post public service ads that are appropriate for the content.
Grotesque picture of the Haiti earthquake. I hope Haitians have fully recovered now…
I noticed ads like this run when this happened. I would think advertisement companies would have something in place to prevent this from happening. It is highly inappropriate and unfeeling, in my opinion.
As if giving the warning about graphic images content is enough to prepare someone from the impact. And this is supposed to be technology and development?
I think that the advertising agencies should be responsible enough and refrain from any inappropriate ad-placements.