'Taboo'

A headline on the Mail's website today asks:

'Is nothing taboo?' For the Mail, certainly not 'death' because elsewhere on their website today - and for much of the day, placed quote prominently on the homepage - was this story:

The website happily posted the photo of two dead bodies hanging from a bridge - given the size of the picture, the 'graphic content' warning was utterly pointless.

And in the article, not only did the photo appear again, but the Mail decided to add an 'enlarge' button so you could see this couple's bloodied bodies in greater detail:

But, as the Telegraph's Tom Chivers pointed out, when it came to repeating the message that was written alongside the bodies, the Mail suddenly became worried about what we might see:

Next to the battered bodies was a sign reading: ‘This is going to happen to all those posting funny things on the internet, You better (expletive) pay attention. I’m about to get you.’

Yes - in the sentence above the 'graphic' picture of the tortured, disemboweled victims, they decide to censor a swear word.

It's not the first time the Mail's website has published such pictures - indeed, in June it ran four photos of two other people killed and hung from a bridge in Mexico.

In May, the Mail was highly critical of the BBC for discussing assisted suicide and for an episode of Inside the Human Body which showed the death of a man named Gerald. The paper said:

BBC bosses are facing huge controversy over the decision to show the death of Gerald, whose full name has not been released...

Critics said last night said the the BBC had gone too far in choosing to broadcast Gerald's death and that it was a cynical attempt to boost ratings.

Presumably, then, the decision of the Mail's website to post such images - and full CCTV footage of the 'horrific execution of man in New York' - is not a cyncial attempt to attract visitors to its website.

(The Mailwatch Forum includes a thread on the Mail's obsession with images of death)