To follow the Society for News Design's Code of Ethical Standards is a balancing act in itself.

Not only does the organization advocate accuracy and fairness, but also courage in photography, illustration and design decisions, according to a presentation given Friday at the American Association of Sunday and Feature Editors by SND president Christine McNeal.

Some examples from the "courage" section of her presentation drew gasps from the handful of editors who attended the workshop. One example, a photo from a front page story on animal euthanasia in the Bakersfield Californian, depicted trash barrels filled to the top with the corpses of dogs that had been put down.

McNeal said her paper, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, would have gotten harsh criticism from readers if it had run the photo, but The Californian was able to defend its use of the powerful image. The story was about the crisis of pet overpopulation and aimed to convince readers to spay and neuter their pets to avoid the necessity of mass euthanasia, McNeal said.

"They wanted to shock," she said.

In other examples, courageous design simply meant innovative alternatives to stale images. McNeal showed a graphic for a story on Italian restaurants that involved a fork twirling strands of the magazine's actual barcode as if it were spaghetti. In another example, taken from a Star Wars story that ran in the midst of the sheep-cloning hype, a cover was littered with tiny pictures of Dolly the sheep, with one tiny Darth Vader head in the bottom corner.

"It's just really different thinking," she said.

Not all of the examples McNeal showed drew unanimous agreement from editors. They debated a photo that ran on the front page of the Miami Herald after former city commissioner Arthur Teele Jr. committed suicide in the paper's lobby. The photo, which ran large on the front page, showed two police officers bent over the body. The photo was angled so that most of Teele's head was obscured, but a pool of blood was visible.

"I don't think it deepens your understanding of the story," said Boston Globe living editor Steve Greenlee. "I personally don't want to see things in the newspaper that would disturb children when it doesn't add anything."

Other editors disagreed, saying the photo shouldn't be treated differently than graphic war photos that receive prominent play on front pages.

To facilitate newsroom discussion about art choices, McNeal said the Society for News Design is in the early stages of establishing online classes in visual ethics through the Poynter Institute and News University. It also plans to set up a way for working journalists to privately e-mail questions to ethical experts.

"What I'm trying to get across," she said, "is talk about it, and think about it."