The Globe and Mail’s public editor, Sylvia Stead, defended the newspaper’s coverage of Luka Rocco Magnotta, the man suspected of killing and dismembering Lin Jun.
According to Stead, the newspaper has “received just few complaints,” like one that the newspaper published too many pictures of the suspect and was “feeding that need” for attention. Stead defended the photos and explained that the newspaper published “multiple photos of Mr. Magnotta with his glam shots and different guises to demonstrate the extreme narcissism that seems a key factor in his behaviour. This was not normal.”
We wrote earlier this month about the Montreal Gazette’s defense of a photo it ran of Magnotta holding a Labatt’s beer, after the brewery demanded–then dropped its demand–that the newspaper unpublish the photograph.
Last year, we wrote when Toronto Star public editor Kathy English explained the newspaper’s publication of a graphic photo of a “convicted ‘sadosexual serial killer'” on its front page because the photo “conveyed the stark truth of the savage sickness of the serial killer who has dominated Canadian news.”