IRAQ WAR - LOOKING GLASS NEWS | |
Why Few Graphic Images from Iraq Make it to U.S. Papers |
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by Barbara Bedway Editor & Publisher Entered into the database on Tuesday, July 19th, 2005 @ 15:31:54 MST |
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NEW YORK In May, the Los Angeles Times released a survey revealing how few photographs
of wounded or dead American service members in Iraq were appearing in U.S. publications.
Newspaper editors seemed to agree that one primary obstacle was logistical: Given
the sporadic nature of the violence occurring in a country the size of California,
getting to the news is a dangerous challenge in itself. But when photographers
are indeed able to capture such scenes, what happens to those images? The Times' survey of six months of coverage found almost no pictures of Americans
killed in action at a time when 559 Americans and Western allies died; the same
publications ran just 44 photos from Iraq to represent the thousands of Westerners
wounded during the same period. But according to photo services, pictures are
sometimes transmitted and left unused. Santiago Lyon, director of photography for The Associated Press, says the wire
service primarily gets such images from embedded photographers, who are bound
by military ground rules to hold back photos in which the dead or wounded might
be recognized until the families are notified. "If the faces are not recognizable,
in theory you can send them," he says. "But it's rare that we're in
a situation where we're able to [obtain] those pictures. Even with the foreign
photographers working there, it's still a lot of hit and miss." One notable exception: Last year, AP photographer John B. Moore -- one of a
team of AP photographers in Iraq who won a Pulitzer in the breaking news category
this year -- got exclusive access to a U.S. military hospital in Baghdad and
was able to photograph the dead and wounded. One striking image that he captured
showed medics attempting to resuscitate a dying soldier. "We made an effort not to show the faces," says Lyon, "but when
we sent them out, in the U.S. a lot of major papers chose not to run them. Those
papers and other media subscribe to our feed. They're paying a flat rate, and
can run as many or as few as they choose. In this case, they chose not to."
For Philadelphia Inquirer photographer David Swanson, who spent a month with
Second Battalion, Fourth Marine Regiment in April 2004, the dearth of photos
of the dead and wounded smacks of "situational" ethics: "There's
less chance of publishing a mortally wounded American on the cover than that
of an Afghani or Iraqi," he relates in an e-mail. "Papers ran the
photos of the dead from the tsunami, but would we have done that if it had happened
in Florida?" The very timeliness of photographs taken in Mosul on election day last January
by Moises Saman, a longtime photographer for Newsday, raised problems for both
the military and the newspaper. In an e-mail from his post in Afghanistan, Saman
describes being embedded with a unit from the 82nd Airborne when a grenade attack
severely injured seven American soldiers: "It was a bloody scene, with
medics frantically assisting the wounded soldiers. The commander of the unit
politely asked me to not file the images until the families of the wounded were
notified. This in itself jeopardized the chances of the photographs being seen,"
due to loss of timeliness. Newsday, however, chose to run two of Saman's photos. The first, published
on the night of the election, showed a soldier being carried away on a stretcher,
photographed from the side to obscure his identity. The second, published four
days later, showed another soldier being evacuated on a stretcher. Saman believes so few pictures are appearing in American papers because of
a double standard that he says reflects the nature of our society. "Americans
understand we are at war -- but not many people want to see the real consequences,
especially when they involve one of your own," he says. "I think some
publications cater to this sentiment by trying not to anger subscribers and
advertisers with harsh 'in-your-face' coverage of the true nature of war."
Newsday's photography editor, Jeff Schamberry, says the paper used the best
photos from the five or six Saman transmitted that day. "There was a sense
of urgency in the pictures," he recalls. "In that respect they were
good, because he was there and recorded an actual hostile event. That day went
better than had been expected, and we were glad to get some kind of an action
shot out of it." But he points out that even when the photographer is present to capture such
an event, further confirmation is often needed: "I hate to eat a good picture,
but if you don't have facts, it's hard to pop a picture in the paper with no
explanation. It's not that you don't trust the photographer, it's just that
they only have part of the story. You try to get the story as the Army reported
it." He cites the memorable photos taken at a Tal Afar checkpoint last January,
showing bloodstained children who'd been riding in their family's car when soldiers
on a patrol at dusk fired on them. Their father, the car's driver, had failed
to slow down despite warning shots, the military said, and both parents were
killed. "The photographer had tremendous pictures, and sent them through
with very sketchy information," Schamberry says. "We wondered how
to run it. We try to present a balanced picture, and not just sensational photos." It was Chris Hondros, a photographer for Getty Images, who took the photos
of the Tal Afar checkpoint shooting while embedded with a unit of the 25th Infantry
Division. He encountered some anger from the military last January after Getty
chose not to agree to the military's request to delay sending them out. "They
never asked me to censor," Hondros emphasizes, "they asked me to delay."
But delay can sometimes mean the photos arrive too late to ever be used. Though he had not violated any ground rules, he chose to leave the next day.
"Even if I had not sent those photos, I would have left that embed,"
he says. "The incident had been a high stress one, and it didn't start
me out on a good footing with these particular soldiers. It's impossible to
be operating under hostility in an embedded situation." His photographs of the blood-spattered, traumatized children were widely distributed
to U.S. papers -- but few ran more than a single photo. By contrast, Hondros
says, those photographs "seemingly dominated the discourse in Europe, where
they were run in full over multiple pages by many important papers there." AP's Lyon agrees that internationally there's more an appetite for those types
of pictures. He feels the reluctance of U.S. newspapers to publish those images
is not an issue on which AP should comment. "We're providing photos and
text to our subscribers, and it's up to them to use pictures as they see fit,"
he observes. "We've covered our mission. Of course, as a journalist, I
think the truth needs to be told." For Swanson, who captured a particularly vivid truth while embedded with Echo
Company, which lost 12 of its Marines in a two-week period, the poverty of images
has removed death from the war: "It's war, whether you agree to it or not
... death needs to be shown. You have to know what you might lose before you
commit so many lives. A country needs to be reminded that an 18-year-old has
just died, and that Memorial Day and Veterans' Day are not just days for picnics
at the beach." |