Scenario 6 – The Photographer who chose not to act
Thích Quảng Ðức, was a Vietnamese Buddhist monk who burned himself to death at a busy Saigon intersection on June 11, 1963. Thích Quảng Ðức was protesting the persecution of Buddhism by South Vietnam’s Ngô Đình Diệm administration. The photographer Malcolm W. Browne went on to win the 1963 World Press Photo of the Year for this image. Another reporter that witnessed the event, David Halberstam, remembers “As he burned he never moved a muscle, never uttered a sound” According to Browne ‘The idea of stopping the protest never occurred to me’. According to his colleague, fellow reporter Peter Arnett ‘We could have prevented that immolation by rushing at him and kicking the gasoline away. As a human being I wanted to, as a reporter I couldn’t’
Were the reporter and photographer right to be passive bystanders in this situation. Should they have acted to prevent this suicide?
Please refer to the ethical standpoints we have studied when replying to this post.
November, 22nd 2008 at 1:28 pm
The monk is making a political protest of what we can only assume is his own free will. By not intervening the reporter/photographer used deontological ethics, following rules by not intervening to save Thích Quảng Ðức, despite the personal urge given their individual morals. As professional journalists it could be said they used virtue ethics to exercise their judgement. I think this was an important decision as cultural relativism applies – these monks have their own set of morals and beliefs which people from other cultures could not understand or possibly emphathise with. There’s no separate moral code by which you could evaluate right and wrong within cultures so they had no right to judge them. However, there’s a line to be drawn with cultural relativism at ethical cleansing/genocide. Another approach they could’ve taken is consequential by considering the outcome of stopping the protest to the cause that the monk was campaigning for. Again, this would back up utlitariansim with the cause as the bigger picture and greater good strived for.
November, 24th 2008 at 5:05 pm
I think that in this case the journalist and photographer did the right thing to not act to stop Thích Quảng Ðức. While obviously it mst have been distressing to watch this happen, it was of his own free will that he chose to commit suicide through protestation.
The monk made the decision to do this, and he wanted his actions to be witnessed in order to have some effect, and to show the strength of his feelings towards the persectuation of Buddhism. I don’t think that we would have wanted to be stopped half-way through, and so would not have appreciated being stoppesd by someone who had no proper understanding of his culture and cause for action.
I also think that they were correct to publish the photographs – the monk was doing this to make a point and call for action, and by reporting it the journalist is getting his point across and showing the world what is happening in these countries.
In this contect this example follows utilitarianism – the end is justifying the means, and the greater good is being pushed as it is hoped that in the long run the monk’s actions will ahve a postive effect.
November, 27th 2008 at 3:26 pm
At the risk of sounding repetitive, I again have to take a utilitarian approach towards this image. Martyrdom is a strange issue, and not one I agree with. George Bernard Shaw claimed that “Martyrdom is the only way that a man can become famous without ability.” Martyrs receive a lot of publicity, and this is what they desire. Ðức wanted to die for his cause, and will be remembered as a key figure in promoting the Buddhist cause in South Vietnam.
I do not agree with the actions of Ðức, and often I believe that people who undertake such action should not receive attention in the press. Nonetheless when this monk set himself on fire he was harming no one but himself. If other people’s lives had been in danger, then there is no doubt that the reporters should have intervened. Conversely, more harm could have been caused if they had stepped in as they then may have put themselves at risk of being incinerated.
As difficult as it must have been for Browne and Halberstam to watch this incident, they were right in publicising this image. The monk died for his cause and wanted the world to know about it. This image allowed the message of the movement to be broadcast around the world. As horrific it is, it is again an example of a picture that allows the world to learn the truth about modern warfare.
I would not have the moral dilemmas in printing this picture like I would have had with image five. No innocent people were harmed by this incident. It was a calculated action, and therefore it is not the responsibility of us in the West to dictate how the wider world should behave.
December, 2nd 2008 at 7:53 pm
Taking a deontological approach to this situation, it would appear that both the photographer and the journalist were right not to intervene and stop Thích Quảng Ðức. Their duty is to observe and report; not to intervene. It also follows the deontological approach as, by not intervening, they are respecting the rights and principles of the monk and the decision made to protest in this way.
Although on a more basic level this may seem callous and uncaring, as a person’s life is still at stake, this actually shows respect for the monk’s protest and what he was trying to achieve.
This offers a real ethical dilemma for many journalists, as it is incredibly difficult to weigh up the difference between your personal values and the professional values you must adhere to.
By acting in this way, it also shows great respect for cultural relativism, ie. a respect for the monk’s culture and the differences to their own.
December, 4th 2008 at 2:21 pm
Thích Quảng Ðức made a decision to take his own life as the most effective form of protest against the persecution of his people and his religion.
As the events of the Vietnam War would go on to show, we in the West had no real understanding of the ethics and morality of Vietnamese culture. For people in economically more developed countries, it is almost inconceivable to consider laying down one’s life for one’s beliefs. Perhaps this is partly because we live in a society of Judeo-Christian values which teach us deontological rules (for example: suicide is wrong because it is against the will of God). Most Western countries have not had a recent history of oppression. Therefore most of us are lucky enough never to have had to consider dying to protect something we believe in. As a result we have a greater fear of death than people in countries where life expectancy is lower.
Thích Quảng Ðức was not constrained by religious rules about suicide, nor by a fear of death. His act was intended I feel, to send a message to the world about what was happening to Buddhists in Vietnam. I believe his act is an example of virtue ethics- awareness of rules and of the consequence of his actions (i.e. that he would die in considerable pain) but realising based upon experience that a dramatic acts are sometimes needed if you want things to change.
I feel that the journalists would have been wrong to intervene as it would mean meddling in a culture that future events would show that the West had little to no understanding of. It would also mean imposing their notions of morality upon someone else. Finally, intervention would risk ruining the monk’s protest, which might have the indirect consequence that the persecution of Buddhist monks in South Vietnam would be able to continue with most outside of Vietnam unaware of the monks’ plight.
December, 7th 2008 at 3:24 pm
Of course as a human with feeling and compassion no one would want to stand back and see someone take their own life in the horrific way that Thích Quảng Ðức did. I’m in no doubt that anyone who watched this happening would forever be haunted by it, the photographer and the reporter included.
However, Thích Quảng Ðức made the decision to take his own life in the way that he felt would be the most effective in highlighting his beliefs. It’s extreme but clearly Thích Quảng Ðức felt that there was a need to be so extreme as anything less would be ignored.
The protest was hurting no one but Thích Quảng Ðức and as much as I don’t believe in his actions he got his message across (we’re still discussing it 45 years later). The reporter and the photographer could be said to have been following deontological ethics by not acting to save Thích Quảng Ðức but why should they have intervened? It was certainly not there place to do so, Ðức was making a protest about something the photographer and the reporter probably knew little about.
January, 18th 2009 at 11:49 pm
This is a tricky one because the issues raised are about personal morality. Thích Quảng Ðức has made a very powerful protest, one that is essentially utilitarian – he is taking his own life for the greater good.
To run in and kick the gasoline away would have seemed like a clumsy act of Western Morality, not taking into account the circumstances or the bigger picture – taking Kant’s rule ethics, believing it is never right to permit someone to take their own life and ignoring his brave protest.
Therefore I cannot condemn these journalists for watching the monk’s death, I don’t think I could do the same thing. It may be a weakness, but my own code of ethics wouldn’t let me live with the knowledge that I had allowed a good person to die.
I could not apply utilitarianism or consequentialism to this case because I could not live with the impact on my own entrenched ethical code.
This is selfish – it is against the wishes of the monk and his beliefs, and therefore I believe there is right and wrong on both sides. This is an extremely powerful picture, and even though I do not believe that its impact (which however big did not stop the atrocities he was protesting against) was worthy of the life taken – I find this to be an impossible situation relying on personal ethics with no theoretical answer.
January, 19th 2009 at 11:01 pm
As I think we all agree, this striking image. Indeed it has been published and re-published repeatedly over the past number of decades, which only re-inforces the power of Thích Quảng Ðức’s protest.
Deontologically, Browne and Halberstam, perhaps should have acted to stop Thích Quảng Ðức, but that would only be if they were applying some personal, as Arnett referred, human rule that dictated one should let another person die needlessly. Certainly our own generally Judeo-Christian values here in the West would suggest that to be the case. However, if the men were acting as reporters rather than simply humans, then perhaps the rules are different. As reporters and photographers they are there to report on current affairs, not intervene or interfere; they should be passive bystanders. To have “kicked the can of gasoline away” would have been an uncalled for intervention – we assume Thích Quảng Ðức was carrying out the protest of his own free will – and therefore against the “rules” of journalism.
Cultural realism could also be applied here, as we here in the West do not necessarily hold the same values and ethics as the Buddhist monks in Vietnam do. Martyrdom in its real sense (rather than the melodramatic use to describe the ‘Metric Martyrs’ etc) is not something we are readily comfortable in modern Western society. We consider it to belong in another time and place. One need only look at how “suicide bombers” are reported. It is difficult for us to comprehend believing in something so strongly that one would be willing to take one’s own life, and do have stopped the protest would have been possibly culturally insensitive. If someone had made the same protest in say the US where there were a number of vocal protests against the war, I dare say someone would have doused them in water pretty sharpish, ethically justified or not.
So if they were right to not intervene, were they right to take the photo, and if so, were they right to publish it? I do believe they were right on all three accounts. Taking Kant’s rule based approach again, they were right to photograph the protest – they were there to report on the happenings in Vietnam and to have ignored this incident would have been against some form of journalistic rules. Taking a utilitarian approach, they were right to publish the photo – the greater good clearly being publishing details regarding the protest, rather than pandering to sensibilities.
Therefore I would have taken exactly the same actions as Browne et al, though I wholeheartedly agree with Arnett – a reporter and a human would act very differently, but that is because ultimately they adhere to different rules.