[Vision2020] No Witness to Sacrifice

[Tom Hansen]

>From this week's (October 3, 2005) Army Times -

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No witness to sacrifice

The American public does not see images of U.S. troops who have given their
lives. Why?

By Joe Junod

Where are the pictures? Where are the pictures of dead U.S. soldiers and
Marines? Why aren?t photographers on the ground in Iraq getting more of
these pictures? 

Why aren?t the wire services transmitting these pictures and why aren't
American newspapers publishing them when they do get sent? And why aren't
U.S. TV networks showing the carnage inflicted on Americans? 

The pictures exist - although newspaper editors say they don't exist in
abundance. Several editors said that they see only a handful over a year's
time.

As an American and the parent of a Marine fighter pilot who served two
combat tours in Iraq, I want to see the pictures. I am not asking for
close-ups that identify a dead soldier or Marine. But I need to see the
bodies.

I want to see the brutality of war firsthand. I want to understand the
ultimate sacrifice being made by our soldiers and Marines.

Los Angeles Times reporter James Rainey, in an article published May 21,
found various causes for the absence of the pictures, including too few
photographers covering a war in a sprawling country; self-censorship by
photographers; soldiers and Marines blocking photographers from getting the
pictures; and self-censorship at editing desks across this country.

And now we have New Orleans, where police and the military have made it
difficult for photographers to do their jobs by limiting access to
operations that include scenes of the dead. If we don't see pictures of the
New Orleans dead, we are not getting the whole story - just a sanitized
version.

The L.A. Times reporter also conducted a review of six major newspapers and
two newsweeklies over a six-month period and found that not a single picture
of a dead U.S. soldier or Marine had been published in that time. 

During the review period, 559 soldiers and Marines died, including allied
soldiers.

One editor, with deep knowledge of the military, told me: "The Army
leadership, which grew up in Vietnam and its wake, still blames the media
and its pictures for the loss of public support. They view 'sustaining the
national will' as part of the mission, so they discourage even the creation
of photos portraying Americans in death, which they equate with defeat."

Another editor said readers are much more sensitive to such pictures than
they were, say, during Vietnam.

A third editor simply said he was seeing only a handful of pictures.

"If we saw more, then whether we published them or not was another
discussion," he said.

Here are some additional questions for newspaper editors and television news
decision-makers about why they are not running the photos of U.S. dead:

. Are you being overly sensitive to potential public outrage? 

. Have you informed your readers and viewers why you are not running such
pictures? 

. Have you considered that you are perhaps unwittingly serving the White
House's political goals by not publishing the pictures? (Were the president
a Democrat, my reaction would be exactly the same.)

. Have you considered that this sanitation makes the war distant because we
Americans - except for soldiers, Marines and their families - have been
asked to sacrifice nothing? 

. Have editors forgotten the power of that 1993 photo in Mogadishu, Somalia
- when two Black Hawk helicopters went down - of the dead Army Ranger,
wrapped in an American flag, being dragged through the streets? 

One editor told me that reader outrage to that picture may have been a
catalyst for the current hesitation to run pictures of such carnage.

Another editor I know ran the Somalia picture four columns wide and above
the fold - after much discussion with her publisher and her staff. They then
prepared an explanation of the decision process that staffers gave to the
torrent of angry callers. 

After listening to those callers all day, the editor reported that many
readers still disagreed with the decision, but many gave the paper credit
for giving the issues serious thought and debate before the picture ran.

That's newspapering at its best: Consider the reader and his reaction, but
make the choice based on news value and what the public needs to know.

Combat photos have great power - something we've known for 143 years.

On Sept. 17, 1862, the battle of Antietam was fought in Maryland. It was -
and remains - the single bloodiest day in American history, when an
estimated 7,600 soldiers died. Alexander Gardner and James Gibson took 70
photographs of the battlefield, including many of the dead that were put on
exhibit in Matthew Brady's studios in New York City and Washington, D.C. For
the first time, Americans confronted the reality of war in images. The
pictures were a sensation.

Wrote an unnamed writer to The New York Times after seeing those pictures:
"Here lie men who have not hesitated to seal and stamp their convictions
with their blood - men who have flung themselves into the greatest gulf of
the unknown to teach the world that there are truths dearer than life,
wrongs and shames more to be dreaded than death."

Indeed, here were martyrs, men who sacrificed their lives for a cause, right
or wrong. 

Today, we can't see the U.S. men and women who are martyrs, dying for a
cause, right or wrong. We can't even see their coffins coming home to a
military base in Delaware.

Where are the pictures? 

The writer is an executive with Gannett Co., parent firm to Army Times and
father of a Marine fighter pilot. A former reporter and editor, he lives in
Arlington, Va.

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Until the American people can truly relate the contributions of martyrs with
the inhumanity of war, the 58,007 names on the Vietnam War Memorial and the
several thousands of MIA's and unaccounted for POWs, coupled with the
several thousands of combat deaths of which our nation must be held
responsible, will amount to nothing more than a statistic to the unaffected.

Take care, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

"Patriotism is not a short and frenzied outburst of emotion but the tranquil
and steady dedication of a lifetime." 
 
--Adlai E. Stevenson, Jr.