The Necessity of Truth: Censorship in "The Boston Photographs" by Nora Ephron Originally published in 1975, Nora Ephron's essay "The Boston Photographs" is at the times still relevant and controversial almost forty years later. This is a series of three photographs published in newspapers across the country. The largest shows a mother and child falling from a collapsed fire escape. Both have tense limbs. If both had survived, the reaction might have been different. The child survived by miraculously landing on the mother, but she ended up dying. The question on everyone's mind was why photographer Stanley Forman decided to take the photos instead of trying to help the falling mother and child. According to Ephron, “…the day the Boston photographs appeared, the Washington Post received more than seventy calls in protest” (319). The fact that so many people are answering the phone and calling, it shows that there was a justifiable reason for this to happen. Charles Seib, the Post's ombudsman at the time, said in an interview about the photographs: "They were a dramatic account of something that had happened, and that's our job." It was news…” (319). And so the question remains: what, if anything, should or must be censored from the public, especially when it comes to current affairs? In the end, Nora Ephron agrees with their publication and the reasons why they were printed instead of being censored for the public. I agree with her and believe we need to educate ourselves about tragedy if it happens, and it does happen around the world. Although it is not necessary that every story be something tragic, those that are tragic also have their place in the news, and are middle of paper ......photograph by Carter. As with the Vietnam reference, Carter took this photo – and many others – as a photojournalist documenting much of what was happening around the war and apartheid. He did his job well and indeed took "breathtaking photos" of many things, and while many of them would "disturb readers", in Ephron's words, the work remains necessary and powerful. We need these photos in our lives to show us the truth, reveal the news as accurately as possible, and to show us a poignant yet artistic side of beauty, tragedy, and the world. Works Cited Ephron, Norah. “Photographs of Boston”. Crazy Salad and Scribble Scribble: A few things about women and notes on the media. New York: Vintage, 2012. Print. Carter, Kevin. Untitled. March 1993. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Kevin-Carter-Child-Vulture-Sudan.jpg. Photograph. Online. February 20. 2014.