After La Prensa newspaper unilaterally decided to stop publishing photos of dead bodies to avoid sensationalizing the increase in violence in the country, the Honduras Journalists’ Guild (CPH) and the government are now working towards an agreement that would remove violent photos from newspaper covers, La Tribuna reports.
Meeting with the union to discuss the killings of 11 Honduran journalists over the last year, Security Minister Oscar Álvarez agreed that papers should “not glorify crime.” “What we do is accept it and come to see it as something normal, which should not be so. The people should reject this violence,” he said, quoted by El Heraldo.
CPH president Juan Ramón Mairena explained that the journalists have proposed a “News pact for a Cultural of Peace,” with the goal of ending the practice of “publishing more sensationalism on the front page and newscasts showing gruesome footage.”
“This has nothing to do with censorship…we are talking about an act of conscience by media owners and us as journalists in response to the surge in violence that is affecting us,” Mairena said, quoted be La Tribuna.
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» Knight Center - August 2010 (Ban on violent photos in Venezuelan newspapers partially lifted)
Note from the editor: This story was originally published by the Knight Center’s blog Journalism in the Americas, the predecessor of LatAm Journalism Review.
