THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 17, 1994 TAG: 9407150005
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: LYNN FEIGENBAUM
LENGTH: Medium: 84 lines
You've heard it said that a picture is worth a thousand words. Well, this week I heard more words than that about two particular photos.
You know the ones I'm talking about - the Sports photo last Sunday from the World Cup soccer competition and the photo Monday taken at White Tail Park, a nudist camp near Zuni.
The soccer photo showed five members of the Netherlands team, each ``holding their private parts,'' as one caller put it, while a Brazilian player kicked in the game-winning goal.
The nudist shot, on the MetroNews front, showed a man drinking coffee at a dinette booth and a woman, back to the camera, at a pay phone. Both were naked. The man's body was in shadows but the woman's profile was more revealing.
``Who needs this?'' said Ellen Callaghan of Norfolk. ``This is something you would find in a tabloid. I don't want that in my newspaper.''
About two dozen other callers said much the same, many stressing it was a photo they didn't want their children to see. They called it ``distasteful,'' ``vulgar,'' ``anti-family'' and even ``pornographic.''
Actually, the point of the story was that White Tail Camp is anything but a den of iniquity - it's an ordinary place filled with ordinary people who just happen to walk around unclothed.
And that included the newspaper reporter and photographer, who did the assignment au naturel.
Kathleen Hendrix of Virginia Beach was amused and delighted by the nudist photo. She had called about another story and I asked her what she thought of it.
``The photo reinforced the idea that nudist colonies are not sexual,'' said Hendrix. ``I thought, here are two people doing normal things.''
Leona Williamson of Virginia Beach didn't mind the article; it was the photo she found objectionable. ``I don't appreciate having breakfast in the morning and looking at these people in the nude.''
Most callers made the point that not only were the people nude, they weren't exactly Cosmo material, either. ``I might have enjoyed it if they both were attractive people,'' said Susan Basnight of Norfolk, ``but not in the newspaper.''
Is that the problem here? Do people have to be twentysomething or Barbie dolls to be acceptable in our culture today?
Do we stop portraying real people because they're not aesthetically pleasing enough to look at over coffee and Cheerios? I fear that's one message I got from our callers.
As for the nudity - ``there is more skin on our public beach and in our local recreation centers than what was portrayed in this image,'' said photo editor Paul Bates, who was on duty that night.
I can understand objecting to a revealing photo - I've run my share of them during my years in the newsroom, some that were probably appropriate and others to my everlasting regret.
One of my first news desk assignments, in fact, was to do a photo layout of a wet T-shirt contest. ``Don't let any anatomy show,'' cautioned my boss. Why, I wondered, as I sliced off practically everything but the subjects' feet, had we even bothered to shoot it?
I understand objections to the nudist photos, and I would have preferred a slightly less revealing pose than the one we used. We need to respect readers' qualms about nudity.
But not if our standards are different for ``real people'' vs. bikini-clad beauties. And not if we equate being in the buff with pornography. Sorry, I don't buy that.
Back to the World Cup soccer photo. About a half-dozen readers found it crude and inappropriate.
I was bewildered. Was it a joke that five players were standing there, clutching their crotches a la Michael Jackson?
Nope, this was serious business. Sports editor Chic Riebel explained that soccer players routinely protect themselves - ``especially when they're standing 10 yards away from a guy who can kick a ball at 65-70 miles an hour.'' Besides, he added, ``that was the deciding goal.''
Unfortunately, a lot of people didn't know that. Soccer is still pretty new in the United States as a spectator sport. And I couldn't find that photo in any of the other newspapers we get in the office.
I suspect our sports editors got a kick (so to speak) out of running the picture. At least, if an explanation had been included in the story or caption, we non-jocks might have understood. . . MEMO: Call the public editor at 446-2475, or send a computer message to
lynn(AT)infi.net. by CNB