Haunted gaze of a bleeding mother in front of the Mariupol maternity ward. Sick children holed up in basements serving as makeshift bunkers in Kiev. The war in Ukraine which is being played out live on our screens has nothing clinical about it. It is violent, dirty, even chilling, so much so that the profusion of images reaching us, even when put into context, quickly becomes difficult to sustain. Some prefer to turn away from it, which is worrying to say the least.
The calls to protect ourselves from the fury of the world that flourish on our social networks express real discomfort. Two years of pandemic have worn out. But let’s face it: the lightning rods that we erect around us have their downsides. They should not fuel our collective indifference. Especially since the danger of trivialization grows as the conflict drags on, to the benefit of Vladimir Putin’s deadly impulses. Other terror regimes watch how far we are willing to go in accepting horror. And take notes.
They should know that sometimes all it takes is one image to change everything. Let us remember the shock caused by the discovery of the small inanimate body of Alan Kurdi, a three-year-old Syrian refugee found on a beach in 2015. The photo of journalist Nilüfer Demir had shaken the passivity of the West in the face of an unprecedented humanitarian crisis. Ditto for the atrocious images of the attack characterized with sarin gas of rebel Ghouta in 2013 by the regime of Bashar al-Assad. In this specific case, the testimonies took a long time to be authenticated, as no independent party had had access to the scene of the tragedy.
This is not the case of Ukraine, where the Russian invasion is however coupled with an information war, deplored Tuesday Reporters Without Borders. Alarmed by a report which already reports one death and a dozen journalists who have been shot, the organization has undertaken to establish a Center for Press Freedom in Lviv. He will have a lot to do to support the reporters and to fight against propaganda. The disconcerting ease in circulating photos and videos caused the number of fake news to explode from the first hours of the conflict.
This has fed a mistrust that the fall of a media iron curtain (economic, cultural, lark!) on Russia has accentuated. These blind, even deceptive, angles have considerably reduced the scope of our gaze on this tragedy, making it even more essential to open up to the horror as captured by the free press. The horror this week took the contours of the face of Tatiana Perebyinis, whose thread of life was cut clean by mortar fire as she fled Irpin with her children, Mykyta and Alisa, who were also deceased. Photojournalist Lynsey Addario captured the chilling scene that was published on the cover of New York Times. A difficult editorial decision that the daily had to defend on several platforms as the image is unsustainable. These debates are familiar to all newsrooms, including that of the Homework : show, yes, but without harming, respecting the humanity of those who are depicted there. Here, it is the need to show the cruelty of the war to take the true measure of it which prevailed. Is right. This is also the opinion of the man whose life was destroyed by this disastrous attack. Found by the Times, Serhiy Perebyinis felt that the shock of the images of his murdered family, however heinous, was necessary. “The whole world needs to know what is happening here. As long as we deign to open our eyes.