Where do we cross the line?

Two words: Aylan Kurdi. Yes, I know, no one wants to recollect the heart wrenching image of the three-year-old innocent child who was washed up on a Turkish beach. More importantly, the image itself is a direct reflection on the voyeuristic and sadistic nature of today’s society.

We live in an unfortunate age where a natural disaster or a terror attack just unleashes a plethora of gory pictures and severed limbs, especially on social media outlets.

Most famous in recent times could have easily been the picture of a rescue worker cradling the lifeless body of Aylan Kurdi. Over and over again we have had futile debates about whether every time a crisis breaks out, the seriousness of the issue gets reduced to horrendous images splashed across various front pages of newspapers around the world, and the victims are all too often innocent children.

Gone are the days when journalists captured genuine grief and loss with their lens and shared a powerful message. Today, with the excessive proliferation of social media outlets, bystanders are seen snapping shots of dying children and burnt corpses with their phones and then upload them directly online with little remorse or concern. Though it can be justified to an extent to publish pictures of the injured as to highlight a major issue but where do we cross the line and decide when enough is enough? It’s high time that social media users (and some newspapers) use their common sense and basic journalistic ethics to decide what pictures are appropriate to share and which are downright brazen and disrespectful.

The photo in question has been shared innumerable times, which is a grave insult not only to the poor child’s family but to humanity as a whole. Ordinary social media users either out of ignorance or sadistic pleasure killed the innocent boy every time the image was liked and shared. In a way, each and every one of us is responsible for this poor boy’s fate, either directly or indirectly. We are all too hungry for freedom of expression but seldom do we make good use of it.

— The reader is an Indian business development manager based in Ajman