Go to Original
A Picture Worth a Thousand Words: Newspaper Criticized for Publishing
Photo
By Helen Thomas
Hearst Newspapers
Thursday 07 May 2008
Washington - Some readers resented The Washington Post for publishing an Associated
Press photograph of a critically wounded Iraqi child being lifted from the rubble
of his home in Baghdad's Sadr City "after a U.S. airstrike."
Two-year-old Ali Hussein later died in a hospital.
As the saying goes, the picture was worth a thousand words because it showed
the true horrors of this war.
Neither side is immune from the killing of Iraqi civilians. But Americans should
be aware of their own responsibility for inflicting death and pain on the innocent.
The Post's ombudsman, Deborah Howell, said about 20 readers complained about
the photo, while a few readers praised the Post for publishing the stark picture
on page one.
Some mothers said they were offended that their children might see the picture,
though one wonders whether their youngsters watch television and play with violent
videos in a pretend world.
From the start of the unprovoked U.S. "shock and awe" invasion of
Iraq on March 20, 2003, the government tried to bar the news media from photographing
flag-draped coffins of American soldiers returning from Iraq. A Freedom of Information
lawsuit forced the government to release pictures of returning coffins.
Howell said some readers felt the photo of the Iraqi boy was "an anti-war
statement; some thought it was in poor taste." Well, so is war.
Howell said her boss, Executive Editor Len Downie, "is cautious about
such photos."
"We have seldom been able to show the human impact of the fighting on
Iraqis," Downie was quoted as saying. "We decided this was a rare
instance in which we had a powerful image with which to do so."
It's unclear to me why this was deemed to be "rare." After five years
of war, there is finally one photo that is supposed to say it all?
Howell said she checked hundreds of U.S. front pages on the Internet but saw
the AP photo nowhere else.
This makes me wonder why the media have shied away from telling the story about
Iraqi civilian casualties. News people and editors were more courageous during
the Vietnam War. What are they afraid of now?
Who can forget the shocking picture of the little Vietnamese girl running down
a road, aflame from a napalm attack? And who can forget the picture of South
Vietnamese police chief Nguyen Ngoc Loan putting a gun to the temple of a young
member of the Viet Cong and executing him on a Saigon street?
I don't remember any American outcry against the press for showing the horror
of war when these photographs were published. Were we braver then? Or maybe
more conscience stricken?
Of course, the Pentagon did not enjoy such images coming out of Saigon in that
era. Most Americans found them appalling, as further evidence of our misbegotten
venture in Vietnam. Americans rallied to the streets in protest and eventually
persuaded President Lyndon Johnson to give up his dreams of reelection in 1968.
Some Americans believe the media were to blame for the U.S. defeat in Vietnam.
Nonsense.
Johnson knew the war was unwinnable, especially after the 1968 Tet offensive
and the request by Army Gen. William Westmoreland for 200,000 more troops, in
addition to the 500,000 already in Vietnam.
The Pentagon made a command decision after the Vietnam War to get better control
of the dissemination of information in future wars.
This led then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to create an office of disinformation
at the start of the Iraqi war. It was later disbanded after howls from the media.
More recently we have seen the Pentagon's propaganda efforts take the form
of carefully coaching retired generals about how to spin the Iraq war when they
appear on television as alleged military experts. The New York Times' revelations
about these pet generals have cast a pall over their reputations.
Too often in this war, the news media seem to have tried to shield the public
from the suffering this war has brought to Americans and Iraqis.
It's not the job of the media to protect the nation from the reality of war.
Rather, it is up to the media to tell the people the truth. They can handle
it.
-----------
Helen Thomas can be reached at hthomas@hearstdc.com
-------
Jump to today's Truthout Features:
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. t r u t h o u t has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is t r u t h o u t endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
"Go to Original" links are provided as a convenience to our readers and allow for verification of authenticity. However, as originating pages are often updated by their originating host sites, the versions posted on TO may not match the versions our readers view when clicking the "Go to Original" links.
Print This Story
E-mail This Story