Two tales of a lack of humanity

Pages one and three of tomorrow's Daily Post will feature two stories that should make anyone with a sense of decency feel angry and ashamed at some of our fellow citizens' lack of humanity.
One story tells of an unknown and monstrous yob who attached a terrapin to a firework rocket and set it off.
The other tells of a well known public servant who, in selecting images of road crash victims for a press conference, refers to some as "not gruesome enough" but praises images of a motorcycle crash victim as "outstandingly good".
The biker in question is of course, Mark Gibney, who was decapitated in the accident. It was the images of his remains that were shown at a press briefing and which caused a subsequent storm of protest, chiefly because the public servant (who is of course our chief constable Richard Brunstrom) hadn’t bothered to refer the matter in advance to Mr Gibney’s distraught family.
If you want a little insight into the way our chief constable works, then read this extract from an email he sent to his press chief Bethan Parry-Jones the night before the press conference.
“...we seem to have lost the plot somewhat. Too many repetitive pictures, not enough content and not enough numbers. We have the UK press here tomorrow – we are going to have to be much sharper than this – and time is now short.
"The presentation is supposed to run something like this: This is not a game. Real death & injury. We must have better slides than the suicide. Not enough. Not gruesome enough. Motorcyclist is outstandingly good."

As a newspaper editor I regularly have to make moral judgements about the use of photographs. Inevitably, our work takes us to the scene of road accidents. The photographers do their jobs and capture the images of what they see. Some of these images are gruesome, many of them far too gruesome to publicise.
In this I am governed by certain codes of conduct. I am also governed, I hope, by a sense of humanity.
I always ask myself these questions:
What would the family think about these images being displayed – would it unduly upset them?
Would this picture unduly offend my readers in general?
The question of what Mr Gibney’s family might think never seemed to have crossed Richard Brunstrom’s mind. And as for the wider public, his motto seems to be: “The more gruesome, the better.”
You will have heard the North Wales force offering various pathetic defences. This was not an issue of publication, they claim, because the pictures were only shown to a selected audience.
Hogwash. The audience included journalists – what do you think they were there to do?
The cops have even tried to blame the whole issue on one of the journalists who asked if the Gibney family had been consulted and then contacted the family when he learned that their feelings had not been taken into account. All that journalist was trying to establish was the answer to one of the questions I ask every time we receive pictures of crash scenes. He just displayed common humanity – and considerable journalistic ability.
What Richard Brunstrom should have done was to contact the Gibneys beforehand and seek their support for the police’s efforts to publicise the dangers of roads, vehicles and speed.
It has happened in the past that we have consulted a family over the use of a picture. The judicious use of crash scene images can illustrate the dangers on our roads but without the support of the affected family, it’s a complete no-no.
Whatever his qualities as a policeman, Richard Brunstrom is no journalist. Best leave that to the experts, Richard, and get on with the job of finding the scumbag who thinks it's a good idea to strap a live animal to a firework.