As a broadcast journalism major here at St. Thomas, I believe in the power of images. Pictures can capture the emotion of a story that oftentimes text alone cannot. Images stay with you, in sometimes the best and in sometimes the worst ways possible.

An image that has stayed with me, even two weeks later, is the footage of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili’s fatal practice run at this year’s Winter Olympics. NBC ran the video during Nightly News, and although anchor Brian Williams repeatedly warned the audience of the video’s graphic nature, much of America was taken off guard when the 21-year-old athlete lost control of his sled at nearly 90 miles an hour, throwing him over the wall and into a concrete support.

Not only did NBC choose to show the violent crash that killed Kumaritashvili, but it showed the clip again and again as I, like many others around the world, watched in awe from my living room. I was shocked by the network’s decision to show these images. For the first time as a journalist, I wondered what was this business I was getting myself into.

In my disgust, I turned off the television and remembered a discussion I had only a few days earlier in my Christian morality class about the media’s responsibility to society. We were discussing the images, or lack thereof, coming out of Haiti after January’s earthquake. The class agreed the media were hiding the real, raw images of death and destruction from the American audience. Many of my classmates blamed the government for this, while others singled out the media for not allowing the public to see the reality of the situation in Haiti.

When I returned to class Monday, instead of hearing this argument used in support of NBC’s decision to show the Georgian athlete’s death, I was surprised to find my classmates were as angry as I was. In essence, my class was saying it was OK to see the images of thousands of dead Haitians, but it was atrocious to see this single man be killed in a luge accident. For the second time in only a few days, I was completely shocked.

In what world do we live where it is socially acceptable to see piles of human bodies decaying on the sidewalks, but we are outraged at a much less graphic luge accident? The case involving the Olympic athlete is much more personal to an American audience and the athlete’s family is likely to see the coverage of their son’s death; however, why is this standard not upheld when it concerns pictures from Haiti?

Obviously, some people will want to see more graphic images in the news, while others will be outraged at the sight. So what is the media supposed to do?

News shouldn’t be candy-coated. We should see the world as it is. But we do need to draw the line of civility somewhere. We, as journalists, have the responsibility to decide which images further the story and which images in themselves become the story.

In the case of the Georgian athlete, one picture in the barrage of images NBC showed summed up this story. It was a still picture of the athlete’s sled lying empty on the track. That image could have told this story. We didn’t need to see him hit the concrete with the force that he did, and we didn’t need to see the images of rescue workers trying to revive him. We do not have the right to see another human being die in that way on national news, not as his family watches along with us.

We should hold this same standard for images coming out of Haiti. Yes, we need to see the reality of the situation, but what good will it do to see close-ups of people dying on the street? I fail to see how this furthers the news rather than just furthering our societal appetite for graphic images.

In some ways, America has become desensitized to human suffering. Because of this, we sometimes confuse the right to know and the right to see these kinds of images.

Ashley Bolkcom can be reached at awbolkcom@stthomas.edu.