Realities of War? An Update

As I noted at my post on Lance Cpl. Joshua M. Bernard, "Realities of War?":

This is obviously touchy. My own view is that the public gets inadequate coverage of our wars, and certainly press blackouts raise questions of government suppression of speech.

I also noted that Bernard's father requested that AP not publish the photograph of his son's last moments. Also, photographer Julie Jacobson violated the embed's contract she signed not to publish images of wartime casualties without consent of the parties.

The response has been tremendously emotional, with good reason. I cited at my post the comments from the soldier at Afghan Quest, who called "bullshit" on the whole thing.

But there's another side on the question of publishing battlefield images, and Jules Crittenden really captures the essential compromise position in his post, "Professional Issues." Jules notes how Jacobson, the photographer, was accepted into the harsh environment by the Marines on the ground. They gave her the benefit of the doubt for enduring the same hardships, and ultimately accepted her as one of their own. Jules is clear to note that Jacobson violated ethics to forward the photos of Bernard to AP's headquarters. But check this out:

It’s a tough issue. Remember those shots of people falling from the Twin Towers? I know a photog who was there and didn’t shoot the jumpers, thought it was in bad taste. Too bad. Wrong call. You always shoot. Whether you publish or not is another matter. But the images other photogs shot of people falling were some of the most evocative photos, gut-punch photos that drove home exactly what was done to those people. The utter loneliness and resignation and finality of the act of falling when the alternative is burning. The image is etched in my brain. I’ve never forgotten it, any more than the deaths I have witnessed firsthand, that etched live images. It reminds me what this is about.

My professional feeling is, violent death happens and people should know about it. I don’t mind sticking it in people’s faces, and agree with some of Jacobson’s points on compelling people to acknowledge what is happening in their name and on their behalf. The United States government has struggled with this issue for a long time, initially banning photos of the dead in World War II, and then, for purposes of shocking the homefront, allowing publication of non-identifiable photos of the dead. Some of those photos, of GIs half buried in the sand at the waterline in the Pacific, are instantly recognized images that convey as best can be conveyed remotely the horror of an amphibious assault, a similar sense of loss, and the loneliness and finality of death much as the 9/11 jumper shots did, and a jarring sense what a generation of young men faced for us. Ernie Pyle described the dead intimately and poignantly in Normandy and Italy. Matthew Brady and others photographed them in their most vulnerable state, horrific states of decomposition that are at the same time heartwrenching and evocative, at Gettysburg, Antietam and other scenes of unimagineable carnage.

All that said, I entirely understand the reaction of families and grunts who don’t want their dead photographed.

There's more at the link, but that pretty much captures the balance of compromise that's been missing from a lot of the debate.

One of the more hysterical responses was Cassandra's at Villainous Company. As noted, AP explicitly violated the family's requests for non-publication, etc. But where Cassandra goes off the handle is in extrapolating the Marine's photo with situations away from the battlefield:

So if we buy into the notion that we need to see the results of violent episodes to truly understand their consequences, does this mean the media will now begin showing graphic footage of rape victims who have been beaten or tortured or cut to shreds by their attackers?

Rape - and the tolerance of it - has a cost, both to the victim and to society. How can we fully understand the tragic cost of rape unless we are allowed to view their injuries and vicariously understand their pain? According to the press, we can't.

Child abuse has a cost. Therefore, if a child is sexually abused or beaten, we need to see graphic close-ups of their torn vaginas or rectums. We need to see graphic photos of that little boy whose father ate his eyes. Otherwise, it's just too easy to gloss over the horrific damages - both mental and physical - done to these innocent victims. We have a right to know.

Would this further humiliate and traumatize the victims and their families? Undoubtedly. But the public's "need to know" outweighs silly concerns about the victim or family members who may be equally traumatized.

Here we get over to Cassandra's well-know proclivity to injecting hard-left-wing feminist perspectives into the debate. What we also see are rank double-standards and more of her ignorant hypocrisy. Recall how Cassandra attacked me for my initial report on the Erin Andrews scandal, and specifically my argument that the story was newsworthy. Here's what Cassandra wrote in reply (and the block quote at the middle there is mine):

For days I went out of my way not to make this personal. I've had many conservations with Donald in the past. As he repeatedly points out, he's hardly the only one who seems unable to understand that daring to work as a sportscaster or being "newsworthy" does not constitute voluntary surrender of the right to privacy in situations where any of us ought to have a reasonable expectation of privacy:

I wouldn't photograph my neighbor in a bikini by the pool, getting out of the shower topless, or shaving her legs in the bathroom. I am linking to the post though, for the purposes of argument. The difference between the Erin Andrew link and those links right here is that the latter have absolutely zero news values.

Good thing his neighbor isn't a Gold Star mother whose son was just killed in Iraq or Afghanistan! That would be newsworthy, and according to the media public curiosity about sensationalistic stories trumps all over considerations. It would seem many folks agree.

Okay, so here we have a young Marine killed in Afghanistan and Cassandra's attacking AP's argument that publishing Bernard's picture was indeed newsworthy.

So, what's it going to be? The fact is, for Cassandra all the talk about rape victims and the privacy of your naked mother in a hotel room are EMOTIONAL appeals, not rational ones. And these all come back to Cassandra's radical feminist perspective that it's (1) wrong to violate privacy in furtherance of public news values, and (2), because specifically there's an essential system of exploitation of women at work that makes all wives, mothers, daughters, and sisters at risk.

Cassandra is a military wife, so we should give her the benefit of the doubt beyond feminist hysteria. Still, there may be a case for sharing images of battle dead with the public that goes beyond news: It's the extention of service postumously. As miltary wife Lily Burana has written:

Within my own circle of active-duty military and veterans' wives, the numbers are little different. In fact, they're in constant flux, as we hotly debate the issue at playgrounds, in cafes and on blogs ...

One acquaintance, favoring privacy, said that if the worst were to happen to her husband and someone wielding a camera dared to elbow in on her family's grief, she'd "open up a can of Army wife whoop-ass." The image of the modern military spouse is half-frontier wife, half-Care Bear -- by turns stoically able and cooingly comforting. But when it comes to acting on behalf of our kin and the larger military family, make no mistake: Wives are warriors too.

I get where the privacy-or-else camp is coming from. Though I could not have anticipated this when I married a soldier in 2002, I have come to care for troops and their families with a ferocity that words fail to elucidate. My instinct is to wave away onlookers, to protect, to defend. The civilian world, in particular the media, is justifiably suspect. Though I have an occupational link to that realm, I harbor my own mistrust of the media, along with some cynicism about a public that fetishizes the warrior class yet can't wholly understand it. Times are stressful enough for military families without adding fear of exploitation.

But as much as I relate to the protective stance of "No, you can't come in," I respect those who would welcome the media, saying, in essence, "Take him, he's yours too. He is our country's son." Let these photos be his final act of service. In the name of honor and authenticity, I want the American people to see how the military respects its own, in aching ceremonial flourish, down to the last detail -- caskets being carefully loaded on planes; the gun salute; the rap-tap-tap of the sticks on the snare drum rim, marking the cortege cadence in the graveyard.

Mrs. Burana's discussion is focusing primarily on Secretary Gates' decision to open media access to Dover Air Force Base. But her mention of the "worst that could happen" is in fact what happened to Lance Cpl. Bernard.

Folks might also check out this essay at BAGnews, "Photo of a Dying Marine: The Larger View":

First, my condolences to the family of Lance Cpl. Joshua Bernard. Although I believe strongly in the release of this image, noting that a month had passed since his death (and the release of more heroic images), and that Joshua had since been buried and the family informed in advance that the photo would be published, I also recognize the family's opposition and the additional pain it has caused.

That said, I have a few takes on the controversy surrounding the release of this photo....

1. Given that the military's rules for visually documenting images of American casualties is so restrictive that it effectively constitutes ongoing censorship and corporate media is so skittish in the face of political push back, the fact this single photo of an American casualty even made the light of day is quite remarkable.

And that brings us back full circle, to my original post, and my reservations against the Pentagon's aggressive reporting restrictions, which "raise questions of government suppression of speech."

Given so much sensitivity on the issue, I can't say exactly how I would respond if faced with similar circumstances (being embedded and taking fatal battlefield images). That said, the discussion here has at least opened up the more hysterical arguments to inspection and placed the Bernard controversy in the larger historical frame of "heartwrenching and evocative" wartime imagery.