The man in the picture has his back to the camera. He's desperately clawing at a subway platform, looking right at the train that's bearing down on him as he stands on the tracks.

It's a terrifying, heart-wrenching image, and it's generating a lot of criticism for the newspaper that used it on its front page -- the salty, sensational New York Post.

Why didn't the photographer help? Why did the newspaper publish the photo?

"NY Post should be ashamed of its misuse of humanity for its cover photo of a man about to be killed by a subway train," one person wrote on Twitter. "When does cruelty end."

"Snuff porn," another user labeled it.

A freelance photographer captured the image Monday after someone shoved the man, 58-year-old Ki-Suck Han, from a subway platform near Times Square.

Seconds after photographer R. Umar Abbasi captured the images, the train fatally struck Ki. He died at a New York Hospital, leaving behind a wife and daughter.

"Doomed," the headline read. "Pushed on the subway track, this man is about to die."

In its story on the incident Tuesday, the Post reported Abbasi was waiting on the platform when he saw the man fall onto the tracks. He said he ran towards the oncoming train, firing his camera's flash to warn the driver.

"I just started running, running, hoping that the driver could see my flash," the newspaper quoted him as saying.

"In that moment, I just wanted to warn the train -- to try and save a life," the Post quoted him as saying.

Some critics, however, questioned Abbasi's motives.

One Twitter user questioned why someones first instinct would be not to help the man, but instead to "snap a photo of him about to die and sell it to the NY Post."

The Post declined to comment. Media observers wondered Tuesday if the newspaper had gone too far this time.

(Read by Brian Salter. Brian Salter is a journalist at the China Daily Website.)

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(Agencies)