Over the past 48 hours I have spoken to a number of people and received a number of emails from people unhappy with the photograph we published this week of Natasha Timmins, the woman who lost her two children in the Otumoetai fire.
Words like anger, dismay, disgust, insensitive and invasive
have been used but the message has been the same - how dare you take a photograph of a woman at her lowest moment.
I have been asked why we would publish such a photo and I hope to give you some understanding in this column. That photo was not intended to distress and if it did, I apologise.
Among the various comments that have been sent my way, I and this paper have been accused of many things.
But at the heart of every decision made at this paper is people - people who are married, have children and live in this community like you do. Don't ever think the Bay of Plenty Times is put out by heartless robots because that is not true.
When we worked on our paper on Thursday morning and discussed coverage of the most tragic of events, we did have readers in mind.
Apart from the main photograph, we also had photos of Natasha Timmins and her surviving daughter, Shaydine, in the back of an ambulance. We also had some quite graphic comments made by Shaydine as she emerged from the house.
I asked that that photo and those comments be excluded because I felt they would upset you due to the girl's age.
When I looked at Natasha Timmins what I saw was absolute grief. If we printed no words on that page and just ran her photo you would completely understand what had happened.
She was a picture of utter grief and total helplessness.
Our task in covering these events is to bring you the reality of what happened. You expect us to accurately convey what happened in that house on that day.
We do not aim to cause undue distress but we also do not want to censor or underplay the true tragedy of an event.
As I have spoken to people who have complained (and I will not be able to get to everyone) I have tried to get an understanding of what people see as suitable and what is not.
The photograph we published is not the first time such an image has been published in a New Zealand paper.
You only have to think of Mark Lundy at the funeral of his wife and child in Palmerston North and the September 11 tragedy to know that these sort of images have been published before.
But what I am gathering from readers is that this happened on our patch and as such required extra sensitivity.
The reality is that any newspaper photographer in the country would have taken that photo on Thursday morning and what we need to discuss in the future is how we deal with that image.
We have to walk a tight line between what is news and what will cause unnecessary distress.
In the aftermath of the fire I went home and discussed with my young children what they should do in the event of a fire and my wife checked the batteries on our smoke alarms.
And we are hearing that that is happening all around town.
Yes, it was a shocking image and yes it was a shocking tragedy and yes we all occasionally need to know the reality that fire can kill.
Remember that real people put your paper together and if we make a mistake in how we cover an event we will learn from it and endeavour not to make it again.
But we are human.
Over the past 48 hours I have spoken to a number of people and received a number of emails from people unhappy with the photograph we published this week of Natasha Timmins, the woman who lost her two children in the Otumoetai fire.
Words like anger, dismay, disgust, insensitive and invasive
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