Daniel West

To Publish or not to Publish? Photographing American Casualties of War.

War is death. The two are inseparable. Anyone who has spent time in combat knows that death
is never more than a split second away. That is the reality of what American servicemembers
face in Afghanistan and Iraq every moment they are there. The challenge of journalists covering
those wars is to convey that reality to an American public insulated from hardship in nearly every
conceivable way. How may a journalist bridge the gap, bring home reality?

One possible - but controversial - method is through images of wounded, dying and dead
servicemembers. Through the years since photography on the battlefield first became practical
and widespread, the way photographers cover the battlefield has changed with each war
photographed. In World War II, government censors tightly controlled the flow of images and
information from the battlefield. The first published photo of American soldiers was in Life
magazine, September, 1943. The photograph had been blocked by government censors for
nearly seven months. Then, the decision was made by President Franklin Roosevelt and the War
Department that “the American people ought to be able to see their own boys as they fall in
battle; to come directly and without words into the presence of their own dead.”

In that instance, the government itself chose to allow the images that bridged the gap. The
Washington Post celebrated the new policy in an editorial, printed Sept. 11 of the same year,
saying:
An overdose of such photographs would be unhealthy. But in proper proportion they can help us
to understand something of what has been sacrificed for the victories we have won. Against a
tough and resourceful enemy every gain entails a cost To gloss over this grim fact is to blur our
vision. If we are to behave as adults in meeting our civilian responsibilities, we must be treated
as adults. This means simply that we must be given the truth without regards to fears about how
we may react to it.
The question was not fully resolved, though, as The Post also voiced fears that the government
released the photos to quell overoptimism in the public.
In Vietnam, journalists had the run of the battlefield, traveling almost without restriction to cover
the war. Dirck Halstead was United Press International’s photo bureau chief in Saigon in 1965
and 1966. He described the press’ access in Vietnam as a “total free-for-all.”
“Our job was to be there to take photographs of whatever happened in front of us,” he said. “Our
core mission was to record history. We had to file based on the merits of the picture. I always
take the position that the end decision was taken by the newspaper or magazine to run a photo.
We supplied the photographs and they decided what to publish.”
The result was that Vietnam was very much in bloody prominence across American newspapers
and television screens for the duration of the war.
One of the most prominent photographers of the Vietnam war, Larry Burrows’ guiding
philosophy, as paraphrased by his son, Russell, as: “In the end, it comes across as a little trite but
essentially it was that if he could show the interested and shock the uninterested into seeing
something like the horrors of war, he’d done his job.”

This open access helped shape public perception of the war, and led to the military’s policy of
tightly controlled access during the first Gulf War. With little access, there was little controversy,
but also a very limited view of the war.

Moving back on the pendulum of access and control is the current policy of embedding
journalists with the troops. The official policy for depiction of casualties states that: “Casualties
may be covered by embedded media as long as the service member’s identity and unit
identification is protected from disclosure until OASD-PA has officially released the name.
Photography from a respectful distance or from angles at which a casualty cannot be identified is
permissible; however, no recording of ramp ceremonies or remains transfers is permitted.”
In practice, however, the rules are very open to interpretation by commanders on the ground, and
results have been mixed on those rare occasions when casualties have been released. The New
York Times published an editorial August 3, 2008 describing several instances where
photographers had been disembedded and even barred from military installations after publishing
photographs of American casualties - even though the images technically were not in violation of
the agreed-upon ground rules governing such images. In another case, a New York Times
photographer captured a sequence of a Marine rushing to save another, gravely wounded,
Marine. Once the photographs were published, the Marine Corps not only supported the
publication, but requested copies of the images in support of an award for the rescuer.

The most recent and prominent controversy over publication of such images centered around the
publication of a graphic sequence of images captured by Associated Press photographer Julie
Jacobson in Dahaneh, Afghanistan. The sequence included one image of Lance Cpl. Joshua M.
Bernard, 21. The image, captured immediately after Bernard was struck by a Rocket-Propelled
Grenade, showed not only his face, but his wounds - one severed leg, the other terribly mangled.
The wounds proved fatal.

Jacobson filed the images, and they were later distributed by the AP to member newspapers
following the release of Bernard’s name and his subsequent burial. The image’s publication
proceeded over the protests of not only the Bernard family, but also those of Secretary of
Defense Robert Gates. The images were published in several, but by no means all, AP member
publications and provoked a storm of debate and controversy, all boiling down to the simple
question posed here. To publish or not?

As a photographer, Jacobson stated that she never questioned whether she should shoot the
scene. “I shot images that day well aware that those images could very possibly never see the
light of day,” she said in a later blog post. “In fact I was sure of it. But I still found myself
recording them. To ignore a moment like that simply because of a phrase in section 8, paragraph
1 of some 10-page form would have been wrong. I was recording his impending death, just as I
had recorded his life moments before walking the point in the bazaar. Death is a part of life and
most certainly a part of war. Isn’t that why we’re here? To document for now and for history the
events of this war? We’d shot everything else thus far and even after, from feature images of a
Marine talking on a SAT phone to his girlfriend, all the way to happy meetings between Marines
and civilians. So shooting the image was not a question.”

In defending their decision to distribute the photos, AP senior managing editor Jon Daniszewski
addressed the protests of the family. “We understand Mr. [John] Bernard’s anguish,” he wrote.
“We believe this image is part of the history of this war. The story and photos are in themselves
a respectful treatment and recognition of sacrifice.”

So, the publication is possible, although the results are mixed. The question facing editors and
photographers is whether the publication of such images is justified.

One soldier, Sgt. 1st Class Thomas Cornaby, of the 358th Public Affairs Detachment, a veteran
of Iraq, doesn’t believe so. “Personally, I cannot see a realistic situation where showing Solders
in agony or death would be appropriate,” he stated. “Even in the telling of the whole story. The
events would have to be told by no other means I.E. writing, personal interviews etc.”

Jacobson, in her blog post about it contradicts that statement, though. “But to me, she said, “a
name on a piece of paper barely touches personalizing casualties. ... An image personalizes that
death and makes people see what it really means to have young men die in combat. ... I think it is
necessary for people to see the good, the bad and the ugly in order to reflect upon ourselves as
human beings. It is necessary to be bothered from time to time. It’s easy to sit at Starbucks far
away across the sea and read about the casualty and then move on without much of another
thought about it. It’s not as easy to see an image of that casualty and not think about it.”

“AP journalists document world events every day. Afghanistan is no exception. We feel it is our
journalistic duty to show the relaity of the war there, however unpleasant and brutal that
sometimes is,” said Santiago Lyon, the director of photography for AP in the AP’s explanation of
their decision to distribute the photo.

As the old saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. In order to make distant news
relatable to the average person, sometimes it must be shown to them. “What good is war
photography if it doesn’t inform the public and allow the public to know what is the cost of war?
Nothing brings it home like the picture of a mortally wounded 21-year-old,” said Donald R.
Winslow, editor of News Photographer magazine and of the National Press Photographers
Association web site.
Returning to whether the photograph was appropriate, though, one commenter on the New York
Times’ Lens Blog about the photo was Cpl. Jerry Wilson of the Marine Corps. He said he felt
the photograph was not inappropriate. “Embedded journalists and photographers are not there to
paint a pretty picture for everyone,” he wrote. “They are there to report the news they see. After
almost eight years of combat, this is the first picture that has actually captured a real part of both
wars. ... As tough as this image is to see in a photo, imagine being 18 or 19 years old and seeing
it happen in front of you on a daily basis.”

Jacobson stated that she showed the photograph of Bernard to his comrades later that day, and
although they paused at the photo, they did not react angrily or protest, accepting the image for
what it was - a representation of what had happened that day, something they lived with every
day.

As soldier, photographer and veteran, I support the publication of images such as those. I would
continue to do so even if it were my own death scene being played out in front of the lens. As
has been stated, that is the reality of war. If such images are what is necessary to remind the
American public they are a nation at war, then so be it. I returned from Iraq to a nation that
seemingly had chosen to ignore the horrors faced daily by the troops sent to war on their behalf.
In a democratic society, each citizen is responsible for what is done in their name. That
responsibility seems to have been forgotten in the case of our current conflicts, and I, for one,
would like to see a reminder.
Questions for discussion:

What value does full coverage of American conflicts carry for the American public?

Should the public be confronted with the full reality of war?

Is it necessary to portray combat casualties in order to give the viewer a true sense of the realities
of war?

Under what circumstances should those images be shown?

How are these images better able to bring a reality home to the viewer than written accounts or
casualty lists?

Should a media outlet be required to consult the family before publication of such images?

What weight, if any, should be given to the nationality of combat casualties in deciding whether
an image should be published? Is it more or less ethically correct to portray enemy or civilian
casualties than American casualties? Why?

What effect might a shocking image of combat have on the viewer? Are there circumstances
where shock is not only necessary, but positive?

How would the general attitude toward our current conflicts be changed, were the public
confronted with Vietnam-style widespread and free coverage of the true horrors of war?

Sources: Recommended Reading for the class are noted after each recommended source.

"AP and the Death of a Marine." AP and the Death of a Marine. 3 Sep. 2009. 15 Sep. 2010.
<http://www.ap.org/fallen_marine/index.html>.

Dunlap, David W. "Behind the Scenes: Rewriting the Rules." Lens Blog. 15 Oct. 2009. 15 Sep.
2010. <http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/15/behind-21/>.

Dunlap, David W. "Behind the Scenes: To Publish or Not?." Lens Blog. 4 Sep. 2009. 15 Sep.
2010. <http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/04/behind-13/>.
Recommended Reading

Dunlap, David W. "From the Archive: Not New, Never Easy." Lens Blog. 23 Sep. 2009. 15 Sep.
2010. <http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/23/archive-5/>.
Recommended Reading

Dunlap, David W. "On Assignment: Not Just One Picture." Lens Blog. 5 Oct. 2009. 15 Sep. 2010.
<http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/05/assignment-8/>.

Dunlap, David W. "Readers' Voices: Public and Private Trauma." Lens Blog. 21 Sep. 2009. 15
Sep. 2010. <http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/21/voices/>.

Hoyt, Clark . "The Public Editor - The Painful Images of War." New York Times. 3 Aug. 2008.
15 Sep. 2010. <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/opinion/03pub-ed.html?_r=1>.
Recommended Reading

Jacobson, Julie . "AP IMPACT: For Marine patrol in Afghanistan, elusive enemy suddenly is
present and deadly." AP and the Death of a Marine. 3 Sep.
2009.<http://www.ap.org/fallen_marine/story.html>.

Jacobson, Julie . "Journal entries of AP photographer embedded with US Marines in

Afghanistan." AP and the Death of a Marine. 3 Sep. 2009. 15 Sep. 2010.
<http://www.ap.org/fallen_marine/jacobson.html>.
Recommended Reading
Kamber, Michael . "4,000 U.S. Deaths, and a Handful of Images." New York Times. 26 Jul.
2008. 15 Sep. 2010. <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/26/world/middleeast/26censor.html?
pagewanted=1&fta=y>.
Recommended Reading - Also view companion slideshow:
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2008/07/25/world/middleeast/20080726_CENSOR2_2.html

White, Tom . "The World Press Photo Awards." Photographylot. 15 Feb. 2010. 22 Sep. 2010.
<http://photographylot.blogspot.com/2010/02/world-press-photo-awards-julie-jacobson.html>.