media

There was a lot of talk this week about the New York Post and the papers' decision to publish a photo of Ki Suk Han moments before his death (above). Han was pushed onto the subway tracks in New York and was struck by an oncoming train. He died shortly after.

In my opinion there has been far too much attention and debate around the newspapers decision to publish the photo, rather than the tragedy itself. At the end of the day it is their job to publish news, however horrifying or ugly it might be. Did it need to be on the front cover? Of course not. Was it incredibly poor taste to run the picture with the headline "Doomed"? Definitely, but papers make money from printing the news so to argue that it's exploitative seems ridiculous to me.

The man who pushed Han, Naeem Davis, has been arrested and charged with murder, though it will of course be of little comfort to his family. The fact that he was able to slip out of the subway without anyone stopping him is shocking, but highlights the unfortunate truth that many people turn to sheep in crowded public situations. People have asked why no one did more to save him, but in all honestly how could you know what you would do in that situation? I don't blame them for not rushing to help Han, and I'm sure more than one of them regrets their decision

Mermaids are up there with unicorns and dragons as some of the best known mythical creatures, yet a US government agency recently felt the need to officially deny their existence. This rather unusual step was taken after a fictional TV programme was mistaken by some viewers as factual.

It all started when the Discovery Channel aired ‘Mermaids: The Body Found' in May. As the press release detailed, the tongue-in-cheek programme painted "a wildly convincing picture of the existence of mermaids, what they may look like and why they've stayed hidden...until now".

However, some easily fooled viewers took the show as a factually accurate documentary and wrote to the National Ocean Service asking about the creatures. This led the agency to post an article on its educational website last week entitled: "No evidence of aquatic humanoids has ever been found".

On following the story up, the BBC managed to get a quite brilliant quote from National Ocean Service spokeswoman Carol Kavanagh, who clarified "we don't have a mermaid science programme".