A regional daily editor has explained his decision to publish a video of a dying homeless man’s final moments on the newspaper’s website.

The Birmingham Mail published CCTV footage showing the as yet unidentified man whose body was found in an alley behind a pub in Birmingham city centre on Tuesday night, the coldest night of the year to that point.

The images show another man searching through his pockets as he slumps to the ground, while others apparently inject themselves with drugs and drink from cans.

In a piece published on the Mail’s website on Friday afternoon, editor Marc Reeves explained why he had decided to publish the disturbing footage.

A still from the footage published by the Mail. The man is shown up against the shutters on the right.

He wrote: “The world’s greatest cities all have problems. But the truly great ones don’t hide from them – they stare them directly in the face. The Birmingham Mail ​proudly celebrates all that is good about our city but today it falls upon us to highlight a miserable underworld which is often ​convenient​ly ignored.

“We agonised over whether or not to publish the video of a dying, or possibly dead, homeless man having his pockets rifled through next to others injecting drugs into themselves.

“It is not the introduction to the weekend anyone really wants. Every day the Mail is contacted by ​readers shocked at the rising tide of rough sleeping our city centre. But while the sight of often very young, but always destitute, people out on our streets until the early hours can be unedifying, it is only the front cover of tragic story.​”

News of the man’s death sparked hundreds of posts on the Mail’s website and social media pages.

​Marc added: “After we have scuttled past on our way home, they have to find what shelter they can, where the dangers of violence and drug and alcohol abuse ​​run rife. So while the footage is unquestionably upsetting,​ we concluded it is important that the whole city sees the true face of homelessness in Birmingham in 2016.

“It is a conundrum for authorities but a challenge for us all to make Birmingham a better place for everyone. Hopefully, this haunting video will lead to change.”

West Midlands Police are not treating the man’s death as suspicious, and the force says he may have died from a drugs overdose.

Marc told HTFP that the response from readers to the Mail’s coverage of the tragedy had been “overwhelming”, with people wanting to know what more they could do to help Birmingham’s homeless.

He said: “An important part of our coverage has been pointing out all the charities and services who work in this area, so readers can volunteer or raise funds. We also thought there would be very mixed views on whether or not we were right to publish so I thought it was very important to explain our reasoning.

“We wanted people to understand we thought long and hard about it, and it was a very deliberate decision to shine a light on a part of the city most people never see.”