Ordinary Gweilo

On Sunday, a man jumped to his death in Ap Lei Chau. It goes without saying that this was very sad, all the more so because he took his six year-old son with him. So, as you might expect, Hong Kong’s popular press treated this story with all the respect and dignity they could summon up. Which turned out to be none at all, as they demonstrated by running photographs of the bodies lying on the ground.

So you’ve decided to run large colour photographs of this family tragedy on the front page of your newspaper. Then, presumably so as not to give offence, you pixellate the photographs. Free advice here – if you don’t want to give offence, write a short factual story and leave out the photographs (like this, for example).

Also, today’s Standard reports on a study that points out why this type of coverage is unhelpful.