The predicament of (journalism) ethics as seen in the about-to-die image

Lévinas's subjunctive mood and the third

Piotr M. Szpunar

pp. 120-135

in: Nick Couldry, Mirca Madianou, Amit Pinchevski (eds), Ethics of media, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013

Abstract

Mohammed Bouazizi was an unemployed Tunisian youth who attempted to earn some money by selling fruit on the streets of Sidi Bouzid. Lacking a permit, he was repeatedly targeted by police, who would confiscate his produce. On 17 December 2010, after a series of such incidents, the cumulative humiliation led Bouazizi to set himself ablaze. His final days in hospital were captured in a photo (Figure 8.1) taken and released by the Ben Ali government, the very government ousted by a movement which used Bouazizi's sacrificial act to mobilize Tunisians. The image presents Bouazizi bandaged from head to toe with only one visible opening for a ventilator, one of several machines keeping him alive. At the foot of the hospital bed stands the then Tunisian president, Zine El Abdine Ben Ali, flanked by doctors and other political figures. This image is not one of death but one in which Bouazizi is about to die — the text that accompanied the image often explicitly stated the fact of his death. This particular type of image, the "about-to-die image", which implies what could be rather than what is (Zelizer 2010), highlights well the nature and predicament of operationalizing a journalism ethics steeped in Lévinasian philosophy (Figure 8.1).

Cited authors

Levinas Emmanuel