Michael Jackson’s Death Photo Stirs Controversy

On the 25^th of June 2009, the whole world was shocked when the “King of Pop”, Michael Jackson was pronounced dead.Well during his death, I was still in Perth, Australia and when I woke up, my cousin told me he was dead. Not only did the entertainment world suffer a great loss; the whole world suffer a great lost. The first thing that comes to everyone’s mind at the time the news was delivered to them was, could this be real? Could it be another hoax of Michael Jackson’s death like the one in 2007?

Source: National Photo Group

Well unfortunately, this time, it is true. Sometimes I wonder why good souls are always taken earlier. The above image has created a mayhem in Hollywood when the time it was released. People wondered if that was the picture Michael Jackson was photographed alive or, the first picture of him, dead.

According to Kress & van Leeuwen (2006), texts are the vessels of meaning in old literacy, and the only way to understand is by reading the text. Images in old literacy are just used for decorations.So people would think that it was just another fake news to grab people's attention. Does the picture showing you it is like a decoration? Of course it is not a decoration, but it is a real picture where people took it when he was pushing into the ambulance. But why would people still like to take pictures of him and does not want to leave him in peace? Perhaps, it is one way to write a story in their magazines or maybe the picture is going to be published on television.

Magazines around too had the sympathetic title, which triggered comments about the relationship between images, words and other elements of the composition (Kristen, 2008)


As I said, magazine would take pictures like these to publish it in their magazine to hit the top sales of the month. Same goes with our Malaysian local films director, and our very own Petronas ads creator, Yasmin Ahmad, she was dead

Source: Google


If the readers think of ethical photography as a “picture of reality”, it is the unethical alterations (Thomas, 2002). Yes, it is definitely unethical at all because they are not giving them any respect to the dead. Just because they do want to make more money by hitting sales everymonth, they put the "juiciest" pictures and what's more? They will definitely exaggerate the story to make it more :juicy" and interesting.


Reference

Kress, G & van Leeuwen, T 2006, Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design, 2^nd edn, Routledge, London, Chapter 6: The Meaning of Composition.

Kristen E. Sukalac, 1st April 2008, PR Conversations, Ethics and Images, viewed on 18th November 2009, at http://www.prconversations.com/?p=411

Snead, E 2009, OK! Cover of Michael Jackson’s Death Photo Stirs Controversy, viewed 18 November 2009, available

<http://blog.zap2it.com/thedishrag/2009/07/release-of-michael-jacksons-death-photo-stirs-controversy-.html>

Thomas H. Wheeler, ‘Photo Truth or Photo Fiction?, viewed on 18th November 2009 at http://bit.ly/2mdIpp