‘The Mirror’ under fire for using stock image

‘The Mirror’ under fire for using stock image
B&T Magazine
By B&T Magazine



UK’s The Mirror has come under fire for its use of a stock image of a crying girl on the front cover for a campaign to combat Britain’s poverty issue.

The Guardian outlines how the girl in the image is American and the photo was taken years ago when the girl was upset by an earthworm.

The image was original uploaded to Flickr then made available by photo distribution company, Getty Images, with the consent of the parents, according to The Independent.

The cover (pictured below), outlines how Britain is the sixth largest economy in the world, however they have handed out one million food parcels, with 330,000 of them going to hungry children.

Questioning the use of the image as ethically appropriate, blogger Dan Barker posed the question to his followers with mixed responses.

Ian Burrell from The Independent in the UK said he was sympathetic towards The Mirror.

“The poverty issue is a real one – and no doubt there were genuine tears this morning from kids pained with hunger in contemporary Britain,” he wrote.

“But trying to take a picture of a crying hungry child with the consent of parents who might feel in some way responsible for that hunger is an assignment that would challenge any news photographer. It’s the sort of picture that might result from the kind of long embedded investigation that the media rarely has the resources for these days.”

Burrell points out that if the paper had used a British child it might have had the admiration from photo-journalists, but “almost certainly have drawn criticism for exploiting a real British child and worsening their plight by putting them on the front page of a paper”.

Many have also had issues with the fact that much attention is being paid to the image rather than the story itself.

Some even got creative with their feelings.

What do you think of The Mirror’s use of the image?




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