Should newspapers publish pictures of the dead?

It is a question at the centre of a debate which flared after the killing of Colonel Gaddafi and has continued today with a ruling by the Press Complaints Commission about a body found on a footpath in Edinburgh.

On the subject of Gaddafi's killing, I have the benefit of a great deal of hindsight. I was on holiday when it happened so I didn't have to make the extremely difficult decision about which pictures to use.

The Daily Mirror caused the most controversy by using a front page picture of Gadaffi's body with a hole in the head under the headline "Don't shoot! Don't shoot!"

The Sun also attracted criticism for its front page of a bloodied Gadaffi moments before he was shot under the headline "That's for Lockerbie".

The Northern Echo front page was relatively restrained, with a large archive photograph of Gadaffi in his pomp, and an inset small picture of the dictator being dragged to his death.

The difficulty is in finding a balance between a momentous piece of history and bad taste. For some, an image of a tyrant lying dead is a moment in time which could not be ignored. For others, there was outrage that newspaper front pages should be so graphic that they had to be hidden from children at the breakfast table.

There is not a black and white answer. If we could go back in time, would we have used a picture of Hitler's body? Had that historic image been available at the end of the war, wouldn't newspapers which decided not to publish it now look extremely silly?

Time will calm the storm over the Daily Mirror and The Sun front pages but, for now, the death of Gaddafi is fresh and raw.

It really comes down to the type of newspaper you want to be. I would argue that the vengeful headline "That's For Lockerbie" is right for The Sun because it captures the emotion felt by its typical reader. Love it or hate it, The Sun knows its market better than any other paper and, like The Mirror, it is more prepared to shock.

The Northern Echo is different. It is a family newspaper. It strives to avoid sensationalism. But it is also a paper of record.

So where would I have drawn the line? With the luxury of all that holiday hindsight, I would not have taken The Mirror's line and used a front page picture of Gaddafi's corpse. But I would have used the picture of him being dragged to his death as the main image on the front page because it was a very significant moment in history.

My view, of course, may well be heavily influenced by the fact that just about every other national newspaper chose that option. I'm in good company.

That doesn't mean that the decision, taken in my absence, to downplay the bloodied picture of a soon-to-be-executed Gaddafi was necessarily wrong. Indeed, I know there will be many of our readers who think it was right to do so.

As I said, finding the right balance is extremely difficult. There is not a definitive right and wrong.

And so to today's ruling by the PCC - the industry's watchdog - which has upheld a complaint against the Daily Record for publishing a photograph of a body found on a footpath in Edinburgh.

A relative of the dead man complained that the use of the picture of the body, wrapped in sheeting, intruded into the family's grief.

The PCC ruled that its code of conduct, requiring publication to be handled "sensitively", had not been followed.

In making its judgement, the PCC expressed concern that the outline of the body was visble through the sheeting.

The Daily Record did not accept a breach of the code but apologised to the family for the distress caused.

The PCC has today called on editors to learn a lesson from the ruling. For my part, I've circulated details of the adjudication to all my staff.

But there will still be difficult decisions ahead for editors.

There is a difference between publishing a picture of the body of a local person in a local newspaper and publishing a picture of the body of an internationally-known figure thousands of miles away.

And yet The Northern Echo was among many newspapers which published photographs of bodies, covered in sheeting, in the aftermath of Derrick Bird's gun rampage which left 12 dead in Cumbria.

Every case has to be considered with extreme care and, as ever, it is a question of where that terribly difficult line should be drawn.