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This is an emotional issue and the answers to it will not be based on reason. My own answer is that I'm unsure. I would probably publish a picture of a dead marine, but I wouldn't publish a picture of a marine who was dying. This may seem like a minuscule difference to others, but to me it's a big difference. Those last moments seem too personal to intrude upon for me.

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2009/09/04/2053049.aspx

QuoteGates vs. AP over war photo
Posted: Friday, September 04, 2009 11:08 AM by Domenico Montanaro
Filed Under: Security

From NBC's Courtney Kube
For the first time since he took office as Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates has reached out to a news organization to ask them not to publish a photograph.

While an Associated Press photographer was embedded with Marines in Helmand last month, a Marine convoy was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade, or RPG. It struck Lance Corporal Joshua M. Bernard severing his legs. He was treated on the scene, but later died at a combat field hospital.

The AP took still photos and video of the attack, and of Bernard, as he lay dying.

Several weeks later, while working on a feature story about the war in Afghanistan, the AP reporter met with Bernard's family and told his father that they had photos and video of their son before he died. Bernard's father was furious that the photos of his mortally wounded son would potentially be published, so he reached out to the U.S. Marine Corps, asking them to stop the publication.

The AP had not violated any rules of embedding, so the Marines' hands were tied. Gates found out about this and called AP President Thomas Curley yesterday to try to stop the photo release.

Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell said Gates called Curley yesterday and was "begging him" to "defer to the wishes of the family," adding that the publication of the photo would "cause them great pain."

AP disagreed and the photo was released.

Gates followed up with a scathing letter to Curley yesterday afternoon. The letter says Gates cannot imagine the pain Bernard's family is feeling right now, and that Curley's "lack of compassion and common sense in choosing to put out this image of their maimed and stricken child on the front page of multiple newspapers is appalling. The issue here is not law, policy or constitutional right -- but judgment and common decency."

Morrell said Gates was disappointed that he could not convince Curley "to do the right thing," but that the secretary is pleased this morning that most news outlets chose not to publish the photo.

Weasel. How many people read AP directly and not filtered through other news outlets that make the decision for themselves whether to publish such images?

I voted no. The public doesn't "need" to see the images.

We pay their salary, we pay for their gear, their training, their deployment, they are fighting on our behalf.

If we want to see them naked with a US flag wedged into their ass cracks, it is our privilege and their honor to serve.

So yes, their dying moments belong to the American people also.

CNN declined to show it.  Anyone seen it?

Chaplain performing last rites, USS Franklin 1945

(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.historynet.com%2Fimages%2Ffranklin_2.jpg&hash=aec932f99295bbe2bf3740d2136189eb6894ba47)

Marine chaplain performing last rites, Korea 1950

(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.gstatic.com%2Fhostedimg%2F5c7f89c342cf9610_landing&hash=8a8057522aeea4289a58275a7831b6e57be336a1)

Marine chaplain performing last rites, Vietnam 1967

(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Ffarm3.static.flickr.com%2F2585%2F3692756173_ab3d76d52b.jpg&hash=c77c816f3341825404852cfaee7c276da0195fda)

Father Reid performing last rites to a British soldier, Belfast 1988

(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amateurphotographer.co.uk%2FimageBank%2Fm%2FMILLTOWN%2520PRIEST%2520DC%25201%2520copy.jpg&hash=259c10c2c49de8c4caa27250049d6ee492ae19f5)


There is a story to tell, and the photograph is an intrinsic part of that story.

Quote from: CountDeMoney on September 04, 2009, 05:40:11 PM
Chaplain performing last rites, USS Franklin 1945

Marine chaplain performing last rites, Korea 1950

Marine chaplain performing last rites, Vietnam 1967

Father Reid performing last rites to a British soldier, Belfast 1988

There is a story to tell, and the photograph is an intrinsic part of that story.

That's a powerful post CdM.  :cry:

Yeah, I'm not really needing to see photos and video of a 21 year old kid who's laying there slowly dying with his legs blown off.  "Powerful" post or not.

Quote from: MadBurgerMaker on September 04, 2009, 05:48:01 PM
Yeah, I'm not really needing to see photos and video of a 21 year old kid who's laying there slowly dying with his legs blown off.  "Powerful" post or not.

Don't see why not...you'll be watching the equivalent every Sunday this fall with your Texans.

Quote from: CountDeMoney on September 04, 2009, 05:48:59 PM
Don't see why not...you'll be watching the equivalent every Sunday this fall with your Texans.

:rolleyes:  Don't you have some baby fish to murder?

Edit:  The photos can be found on Google.  Yeah...

http://www.tampabay.com/incoming/article1033549.ece

That's war. I don't think we should try to hide it. And I say that as someone who has a brother shipping off to Afghanistan this month.

Quote from: MadBurgerMaker on September 04, 2009, 05:49:34 PM
:rolleyes:  Don't you have some baby fish to murder?

:P I named the big one Rosencopter.  Just for you.

Quote from: Warspite on September 04, 2009, 06:00:54 PM
That's war. I don't think we should try to hide it. And I say that as someone who has a brother shipping off to Afghanistan this month.

I don't think it's a matter of "hiding" it...it's not like we haven't seen the videos and other pictures, etc.  Hell, you can just look at YouTube.  In this case, however, the family pretty obviously doesn't want the photos release.  At least wait more than a couple weeks before pissing in their faces, shit.  It's just not really something that needs to be thrown out there, at least not like that.

And really...the photo I've seen sucks ass anyway.

Quote:P I named the big one Rosencopter.  Just for you.

:w00t:

Quote from: Warspite on September 04, 2009, 06:00:54 PM
That's war. I don't think we should try to hide it. And I say that as someone who has a brother shipping off to Afghanistan this month.

:bowler: :hug:

Quote from: MadBurgerMaker on September 04, 2009, 06:07:06 PM

Quote from: Warspite on September 04, 2009, 06:00:54 PM
That's war. I don't think we should try to hide it. And I say that as someone who has a brother shipping off to Afghanistan this month.

At least wait more than a couple weeks before pissing in their faces, shit.

Which is it?

It irks me that the AP disregarded the father's wishes, but I understand and appreciate the need for pictures like these to be seen. It's one thing to see portraits of the deceased in the newspapers or on TV; it's entirely something else to see a photograph of the same person in their dying moments. There is more "truth" to be gleaned in the latter, perhaps. The rub is that these pictures are more "personal" in nature, which creates a sense of "ownership" in those who have a very personal stake in the picture, namely immediate family members. Because of this personal nature, though, they carry a greater weight than, say, the little obits you see in the papers. How many of us, when we see pictures of such horrors, instead of seeing nameless figures of unknowns, transpose ourselves and our friends and family into these pictures? That is the power war photography.

The public's perception of war is seen almost entirely through the medium of the press. It has a responsibility to show war in all its aspects. When the press does this it creates a better informed public; the same public that is complicit in sending these young men and women to die in war, and therefore has an ancillary role in the creation of these very photographs.

That being said, I would not have published the photographs, but I say this as an entirely biased individual, who's lost friends in war and has seen the depths of despair these deaths induce in families. Perhaps then, if I were the AP official who had to decide on these pictures, I would have recused myself and let someone else make the decision.

Quote from: Warspite on September 04, 2009, 06:00:54 PM
That's war. I don't think we should try to hide it. And I say that as someone who has a brother shipping off to Afghanistan this month.

Good luck to him. You too. 

I think AP showed restraint in waiting until after the burial to release the photo, so it isn't like they were completely callous.  I think media self-censorship is more dangerous than the release of this kind of photo.  Had it been a close-up showing him in agony, I might decide differently.

Incidentally, I was upset that the movie The Hunt for Red October used a fairly famous film clip of a carrier ramp strike in which two Naval Aviators died as part of their "ratchet up the tension" plot device.  If you want to show a fictional plane crash, fake one.  Don't use the film of actual people dying in order to help sell a fictional movie.  The use of that film in a documentary wouldn't have bothered me.

Quote from: grumbler on September 04, 2009, 07:02:37 PM
Incidentally, I was upset that the movie The Hunt for Red October used a fairly famous film clip of a carrier ramp strike in which two Naval Aviators died as part of their "ratchet up the tension" plot device.  If you want to show a fictional plane crash, fake one.  Don't use the film of actual people dying in order to help sell a fictional movie.  The use of that film in a documentary wouldn't have bothered me.

Yeah, that always annoyed the shit out of me, too.  Unnecessary.

You guys are too sensitive.