(Facebook)

Something pretty weird has been going on lately. Well, maybe not “weird” but at least kinda shady. I get a lot of my news from websites, especially CBC. I’ve noticed a couple times now, the most recently being this morning, that when someone dies, they post a picture of that person. Now, I’m ok with that, but what’s troubling is the source of that photo – Facebook.

Is this a new practice in journalism? Is it encouraged? That is, searching Facebook for recently-deceased individuals and, I’m assuming, just taking a picture from their account to use in a news story? It seems to be the way CBC does it, and I’ve noticed it on other news outlets too. I mean, I’ve noticed it more and more over the past 6 months, and it seems to be creeping from the semi-tabloid outlets to the reasonably legit now.

I’m not too up on Facebook’s user policy, but is this legal? I mean, if it’s legal, whatever, but is it ethical or in good taste? In the above case, this woman was murdered in a murder-suicide, likely a domestic dispute. It is good to put a face to these crimes, since domestic abuse is under-reported, but shouldn’t it be up to the family to release a photo for press use? Deaths that make the news are rarely timely, peaceful, or dignified. I mean, if it’s a public figure, I guess that’s fair game, but digging into someone’s Facebook account seems sleazy to me. Probably legal, but sleazy.

What do you think? I’m going to do an informal poll. If you’re reading through an RSS feed or reader, you might need to visit my blog to access the poll.

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