Photojournalism: Journalistic Reality and Necessity

Aylan Kurdi, a three year old Syrian boy’s image carried on the front pages of newspapers and magazines in September 2015 was enough to stop the world in its tracks. It embodied the ravages of the Syrian war which has made headlines in newspapers and in the mass media in the past few years. Photo journalism is “Journalism in which written copy is subordinate to pictorial presentation of news stories or in which a high proportion of pictorial presentation is used, is broadly news photography” according to Miriam Webster’s dictionary. News photography sears, it captures reality. It is a necessity in this world which requires evidence and substantiation. This paper aims to study the photos related to the war in Syria; especially photos of Aylan Kurdi a three year old boy washed ashore while escaping with his family from Syria. The impact of these photographs on readers has been made through a qualitative study with in-depth interviews. The disturbing nature of the photographs, the knowledge about the war in Syria, the need and necessity of using of such photographs in media, feelings evoked, and the impact of the photographs by being shown on social media was gauged through a questionnaire and in-depth interviews.