National Enquirer publishes photo it alleges shows Whitney Houston in casket: Has a line been crossed?

The National Enquirer has provoked outrage Wednesday released when a cover with a photo that the gold supposedly late Whitney Houston in a coffin.

The existence of the photos of the Enquirer, the tabloid has been at the Whigham Funeral Home in New Jersey included claims have been reported by several outlets. Some, including Jezebel and the Fox 411 blog published the picture on top of their jobs without warning. The Daily Mail published a photo of the fuzzy body.

(If the image you want to gain context, it cannot be found here.The photo will be published on Celebritology.)

It is not known how the Enquirer obtained the photo. Requests for Comments were from the Houston publicist and Whigham Funeral Home is not returned.

Even without testing, the picture is shocking and alarming. But it is not surprising that it was published.

The Enquirer published a photo of Elvis Presley in his coffin on the cover in 1977. The issue sold 6.5 million copies, according to the Sun-Sentinel. More recently, a photo of the dead body of Michael Jackson during the trial of Dr. Conrad Murray has been shown. It was then published in the media.

In the opinion of this writer, a threshold was exceeded. It seems very unethical to me that a photo of this kind, to be published in the first place, but mostly without the consent of the person and the family. This seems to be a consensus on Twitter as well. But where should the line be drawn in the first place?

Houston's funeral was on Saturday at a church in Newark, was broadcast live from The Associated Press courtesy of the family. Celebritology integrates the live stream and writes messages on the service.

CNN, a cable network to broadcast the funeral, an average of five million viewers during the period of three years and a half hour, when it has occurred, the New York Times. The flow of the AP had almost 2 million unique visitors. Obviously, a request could be observed.

The BBC was forced to defend its decision to cover the funeral, after 34 complaints, saying: "It is the great interest is reflected by his sudden death, and realizes the impact it had a record as an artist, has the world."

Other outlets, including Entertainment Weekly and ABC News, he took a step further and decided to live blog service. EW for the decision was in the comments of the situation, the live blog (for example, criticized preach. "A live blog the funeral of a man is not only tacky, it is grotesquely inappropriate") comments on this post have now been disabled. Stakeholders on ABC News do not appear on the live blog object.

News agencies like AP and Getty made photos of customers outside the funeral, the coffin and the hearse of Houston, he was in. This is clearly not the same as that carried out the Enquirer did. But these images necessary?

This does not mean that it is never a reason to post photos of the dead. The Washington Post and several other outlets ran photos of a bloody Muammar Gaddafi before his death in online and print. Roy, The Guardian, defended the decision Greensdale his paper to do the same thing: "The pictures on the net, it would seem strange for them to ignore the newspapers seem to us to have failed in their duty to report the reality of death. of Gaddafi (exact version) .... This is the news - macabre, gruesome new and terrible (pick your own adjective shock) - and the pictures, a story of brutality and chaos of crowds, which could not by words alone explains told be. "

Do you think the National Enquirer has a limit is exceeded? How do you think think about the coverage of the death of Houston? Tell us in the comments.