This certainly won’t win the Post any points with Alec Baldwin.
Yesterday, the Big Apple’s most notorious tabloid created a firestorm of controversy with a cover that depicts a man about to be hit and killed by an oncoming subway train. The victim, Ki-Suck Han of Queens, was reportedly pushed onto the tracks by an unknown assailant; he died Monday.
Though most agree that publishing the photo this way — and with a headline reading “DOOMED” — was in poor taste, opinions are divided with regard to whether the picture’s photographer, Post freelancer R. Umar Abbasi, should have tried harder to help Han. It’s an ethics question as old as journalism: When a subject is in danger, what are the journalist’s responsibilities?
Abbasi defended his actions during a somber Today segment this morning, telling Matt Lauer and Savannah Guthrie that he was standing on the opposite end of the subway platform from Han when Han was shoved into the train’s path. “It took me a second to figure out what was happening,” he said when Lauer asked if he had immediately started taking pictures. “The guy got up and was trying to get as close to the edge of the platform, and I saw the lights in the distance of the approaching train. And the only thing I could think of at that time was to alert the driver with my camera flash. And I started running.”
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