Two photos of men about to die: Why only one debate?

• The photo of a man about to be killed by a subway train brought shock and outrage

Last week, the New York Post published a front-page photo of a man taken just seconds before he was fatally struck by a subway train. The paper took major heat for its decision to run such a horrific image.

This week, several newspapers posted a chilling surveillance video image of a man about to be murdered in a Mafia-style hit in Manhattan. The response to that picture was minimal compared with the controversy around the Post photo.

Some people asked on social media why the photo of a gunman and his soon-to-be victim wasn't as controversial as last week's subway image, but mostly, the picture and news of the assassination were shared on Twitter without critical comment.

What's going on? Why such vitriol for the Post subway photo -- which scores of journalism critics and social media users denounced as insensitive and sensationalist -- and almost no criticism of the news outlets that showed another imminent death?

One big difference: There was journalistic value in running assassination-related pictures since they showed a "cold-blooded, premeditated" crime unfolding, says Kelly McBride, a senior faculty member for ethics at the journalism education group Poynter Institute.

There was no clear "journalistic purpose" to running the subway image, she says. It is "not bearing witness to something people need to know about."

Those images show a hooded gunman walking eerily close to victim Brandon Woodard before shooting.

Newspapers such as The New York Times and the Post ran a photo of the shooter behind Woodard in their print editions. Other news outlets, including USA TODAY, ran parts of the surveillance video on their websites.

The controversial Post photo last week showed Queens resident Ki-Suck Han standing in the subway tracks after he was pushed of the platform by another man. The man accused of shoving Han told the Post he was under the influence of drugs and heard voices in his head that coaxed him into jostling Han.

"They are two different situations," with the execution-style murder much more disruptive to society -- making it much more newsworthy, McBride says.

One incident involved a mentally unstable perpetrator. The other was a planned killing.

"As a civil society, we can't function if people can commit murders out in the open like that and get away with it," she says.

The surveillance video, released by the New York Police Department in a bid for the public's help in identifying the gunman, "sheds light on a crime in which society has a profound stake in preventing or solving and punishing," she says.

Another element makes the image of Woodard and his killer much less controversial: It was captured by a security camera, not taken by a person.

"There is no human being standing there pushing 'record,' " McBride says.

The subway photo, by contrast, was shot by a freelance Post photographer who happened to be on the platform when Han tumbled onto the tracks.

That photographer, R. Umar Abbasi, was condemned for snapping photos instead of trying to pull Han to safety.

Abbasi says an approaching train hit Han about 20 seconds after he fell in. He also says that from where he was standing, there wouldn't have been enough time for him to reach Han before he was killed.

Yet viewers see it from the photographer's viewpoint and assume that they would have had time to help, McBride says.

"That's the power of photography -- it puts you right there in the shoes of the photographer," she says.

Unlike the subway death, there would have been absolutely no time for a bystander to try to save Woodard, she adds. The bullet would have pierced him in fractions of a second, so there is no person to blame for inaction, callousness or complacency.

"There is nothing you can do when someone pulls out a gun and shoots somebody," she says. "You can't block the bullet."

In general, photojournalism ethics decisions are tough, says McBride. They've also become more common as news organizations increasingly get video footage from surveillance cameras, professorial photographers and people with camera-enabled smartphones.

"Photo editors, like all editors, are struggling to discern what content best serves their particular audience," she says. "Editors have to struggle to define what information is relevant to their particular audience, and that is hard to do."