AP Photo/Jeff Roberson |
Have you ever seen a photo of a fallen college athlete as
tastelessly intrusive as this one? When
Jesse Morgan, a shooting guard and team
leader with the UMass Amherst Minutemen, went down near the sideline in a January 13 game against Fordham, an AP
photographer captured the moment. Two days later, after the team fessed up
that Morgan’s season was over with a torn ACL, the Northampton, Massachusetts-based
Daily Hampshire Gazette ran the macabre
photo. “It’s Isenheim worthy,” commented a friend, alluding to the
expressionist crucifixion in Grunewald's iconic Isenheim Altarpiece.
Agony at Isenheim |
Friends who have followed college basketball for 50+
years say that they’ve never seen anything quite like the photo of Morgan with its max
headroom intrusiveness. We give many of our high-profile college athletes generous scholarship support and
celebrity status. In return, we ask much from them, including stressful time
commitments and personal risk. Have the Jesse Morgans of the world embraced a
faustian social contract that allows for graphic media depiction as practiced
by the Gazette? I suspect that the newspaper would have refrained from running a similar photo
of Morgan had he fallen on the ice outside the arena. But inside the building,
a 21-year-old’s lack of privacy apparently knows no bounds.
1 comment:
Could not agree more!
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