Never forget.
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| Iraq-Jordan |
| Unseen pictures, untold stories |
| 2005-05-22 |
| A review of six prominent U.S. newspapers and the nation's two most popular newsmagazines during a recent six-month period found almost no pictures from the war zone of Americans killed in action. During that time, 559 Americans and Western allies died. The same publications ran 44 photos from Iraq to represent the thousands of Westerners wounded during that same time. Many photographers and editors believe they are delivering Americans an incomplete portrait of the violence that has killed 1,797 U.S. service members and their Western allies and wounded 12,516 Americans. Journalists attribute the relatively bloodless portrayal of the war to a variety of causes — some in their control, others in the hands of the U.S. military, and the most important related to the far-flung nature of the conflict and the way American news outlets perceive their role. "We in the news business are not doing a very good job of showing our readers what has really happened over there," said Pim Van Hemmen, assistant managing editor for photography at the Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J. "Writing in a headline that 1,500 Americans have died doesn't give you nearly the impact of showing one serviceman who is dead," Van Hemmen said. "It's the power of visuals." Publishing such photos grabs readers' attention, but not always in ways that news executives like. When the Star-Ledger and several other papers ran the Babbitt photo in November, their editors were lashed by some readers — who called them cruel, insensitive, even unpatriotic. Deirdre Sargent, whose husband was deployed to Iraq, e-mailed editors of the News Tribune of Tacoma, Wash., that the photo left her "shaking and in tears for hours." She added: "It was tacky, unprofessional and completely unnecessary." Much more at the link... |
| Posted by:Cog |
| #34 *smile* |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2005-05-22 19:28 |
| #33 Trailing Wife: Allow me to amplify. Your daughter and my 19 year old are but two of a whole generation of young girls coming of age who were raised right, and who see and understand that whatever our nation does wrong is always made right, and that the lies and distortions by the MSM academia, et al, are something to rectify, even if it means simply raising their children to believe what we know this nation has come to mean to billions of non Muslims worldwide. |
| Posted by: badanov 2005-05-22 19:23 |
| #32 The kids of this generation are much cleverer than the reactionary "progressive" profs realize, in part due to the education establishment itself. Throughout the primary grades the trailing daughters have been required to summarize newspaper articles for social studies. In parallel, they've been taught about propaganda techniques, so as to arm them against evil tobacco and sugary cereals advertising. But TD1 has taken to pointing out, with a great deal of glee, propaganda techniques used in news articles... and I'm sure that plenty of other young people have learnt their lessons at least as well as she. Popcorn, anyone? |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2005-05-22 18:32 |
| #31 Amen, Sgt Mom! You nailed it dead solid perfect. |
| Posted by: .com 2005-05-22 18:13 |
| #30 Good for you, Cog. You may be one of the few who really has a grasp of how offensive to the military this whole thing is... like our lives, and the lives... and deaths of our people are some sort of bizarre reality show? And they get miffed because they can't get that one, million-dollar, Pulitzer-prize winning shot? There are primitive people who belive that being photographed steals your soul. I am beginning to wonder if being the photographer steals your soul instead. |
| Posted by: Sgt. Mom 2005-05-22 17:57 |
| #29 Oh and Sgt Mom; I help the soldier. F the Pulitzer committee. |
| Posted by: Cog 2005-05-22 16:35 |
| #28 Thank you, Cog. |
| Posted by: Seafarious 2005-05-22 16:35 |
| #27 Just one note. I did not support this article, I just wanted to put this up here so everyone could read it. |
| Posted by: Cog 2005-05-22 16:33 |
| #26 AP, great story. |
| Posted by: Matt 2005-05-22 16:04 |
| #25 Matt---I like your suggestion. It is tongue in cheek, but it hits the mark. A simple quid pro quo or a STFU and get out of the imbed business. MSM take your choice. Make the suggestion and stand back and watch 'em howl. Heh heh. Innocent source of merriment. Dad witnessed an incident with a very rotund AP reporter on Okinawa in WW2. This guy was arrogant to the max. Standing up and being a very large target, he drew Japanese machine gun fire. So this guy starts to run, and the Japanese MG never lead him, so they were just a little behind the target. Dad said that he never knew that such mass could go so fast. Marines in their foxholes were cheering him on like in a horse race. Hooting and hollering. Everyone had a good time except the AP reporter. |
| Posted by: Alaska Paul 2005-05-22 16:01 |
| #24 rereading the comments here and elsewhere, you have to wonder just how deluded the press is not to understand just how unpopular, unfashionable and how unliked they have become. No changes on the part of news weak or rather. Still riding high off their own fumes. like a bunch of old whores hawking their wares - they still strut their stuff...even if not many are buying these days. |
| Posted by: 2b 2005-05-22 15:52 |
| #23 Never speaks to the mission, the bravery, courage, and honor of our fallen heros--only considers the "cost" of war. Pretty damn jaded, which is precisely why there is so little access, etc. So, keep whining from the comforts of the Baghdad hotel. |
| Posted by: Captain America 2005-05-22 15:15 |
| #22 "I wonder how the press would feel if we started publishing photos of dead reporters." I would say there isn't enough of them and demand more Robert. I see the MSM as an extention of the groups attacking western civilization. The press regulary give aid and comfort to terrorists. This lamentation of not enough pictures to sell their propagana is just proof of that. |
| Posted by: Sock Puppet 0’ Doom 2005-05-22 15:10 |
| #21 a bunch of sad pathetic losers who hung their hat with tyrants who raped, pillaged and massacred millions - if not billions. But hey, it made them feel important to proclaim they were better, smarter and more enlightened than the established wise men of the ages. same ol' same ol'. The pendulum (sp?) swings back and forth. The only reason that these self-righteous, wanna-be brats were able to pull off, for so long, their superiority charade, is because they sucked the air out of a brief opportunity in time when technology allowed them to control the press under the guisse of "freedom of the press". These carpet baggers and snake-oil salesmen profited wisely. They learned well how to manipulate the system for their own gain, some to profit financially, some just to soothe their feelings of inferiorty. It was a unique time in the world when they simply allowed to abused a privilige that was granted to them by good men who bequeathed them the privilege in blood. Good people were at a loss as to how to maintain the higher goal of a free press, while shutting down these bottom-feeding scum. well..times have changed. we are all older and wiser. They are what they are... The emperors have no clothes. |
| Posted by: 2b 2005-05-22 14:56 |
| #20 Once again, having negotiated the labyrinthine spin, seeming couter-spin, and ill-wrought, falsely premised conclusion, the BM expects us to feel sorrow for their inability to, as they would have it, *sniff*, depict "what has really happened over there," No mention, again of the prodigeous body of visual evidence, provided by "the al Jazeera Terrorist Network" (I'm not making this up, those are the actual words of News weak's editor Mark Whitaker in a minor audio faux pas) of the video taped beheadings, abuse and mutilation of "what happened over there". All such images self censored by the Lame Stream Media. And why the use of the past tense? Aern't citizens still held captive on threat of more beheading, and the follow-up beheading video that will be attributed, this next time, to newsweaks' slanders. Where were you, Wim Bim Lim Pim van Hemmmen, when hundreds of years old Christian Churches were burnt to the ground, by "ehtnic Albanians" (trans - Muslims in Kosovo? Alotta unanswered, much less even asked, questions, you flthy narcicissist, and don't try and tell me you ran out of film. Its always *sniff* about you, isn't it Mr. Van Lemming? We don't share your self absortion about your shortcomings, and your un-accomplished agenda, now do we? People hate your guts for what you've done, and will continue to do. Look at any BM follow-up defence of Newsweep by the Washboard, the slimes, thelefty blogs ,etc. --Quotation after quotation from Scott McClellan Scott McClellan, Condi rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Gen. Richard Myers, and quotations from some "holy men" in Pakistan, who started (back) up the whole shitstorm, with Newsweeks help, and not so much as a answer, much less a qestion from or directed to newsweek as to the reponsibility of the BM as to the lives and the deaths, and murders caused directly from the seditious actions of the Media. I want those responsible fog-marched to prison over this. Care to comment on that News week? Wim Bim Lame Tim Pim Hemmen my skirt? You freak. |
| Posted by: an dalusian dog 2005-05-22 14:55 |
| #19 Ouch, Sgt. Mom! Truer words were never spoken. |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2005-05-22 14:42 |
| #18 One grad assistant at the Center told me recently, "Doc, since I've been here, I've learned that nearly everything I was taught about Vietnam is a lie. The bastards lied to us, all of them from Kindergarten to undergrad, and I am going to set it straight." Proof, positive, there is a God. |
| Posted by: badanov 2005-05-22 14:09 |
| #17 Indeed, Badanov. This is already happening in academia. The traitorous Vietnam generation of professors, the draft-dodgers and left shills, are getting old. They and the two generations of conformists they have indoctrinated continue to dominate the academic world, but there are many signs that the fascade is cracking. A new and radical generation of historians has appeared for example, typified by the veterans and young people who run the Center for the Study of the Vietnam War at Texas Tech. They have access to original source material and their conclusions are often damning to those in higher positions of tenure and status. One grad assistant at the Center told me recently, "Doc, since I've been here, I've learned that nearly everything I was taught about Vietnam is a lie. The bastards lied to us, all of them from Kindergarten to undergrad, and I am going to set it straight." |
| Posted by: Atomic Conspiracy 2005-05-22 14:05 |
| #16 Matt, you make a good point. A lot of these folks will return from Iraq/Afghanistan and they will go to college and they will start to get into the upper reaches of media and will make things right. That's the plan, anyway. |
| Posted by: badanov 2005-05-22 13:38 |
| #15 The obvious way to circumvent this is to educate the public in the once-commonplace methodology of critical thinking and rational skepticism. Anyone who draws factual conclusions from a selection of photographs is a sheep, a victim, and a fool. If people could properly evaluate these kinds of non-rational appeals, they would be immune to most forms of media distortions. Unfortunately, they would also be immune to many advertising appeals, which is probably the real reason the media culture and its leftist shills do everything possible to suppress genuine education in critical thinking. |
| Posted by: Atomic Conspiracy 2005-05-22 13:28 |
| #14 Since the LA Times gets to have reporters embedded with the military, why doesn't the miltary get reciprocal courtesy, like a Marine gunnery sergeant embedded with the LA Times editorial board. "Sir, if you publish that photo I will rip your arm off and beat you to death with it, I kid you not. With all due respect, sir." |
| Posted by: Matt 2005-05-22 13:27 |
| #13 Ah, yes, the impact of visuals. Pictures are a powerful way to enhance the truth, if the selection and presentation is consistent with the facts, but they can also lie for the same reason. When the BBC covered the "Thunder Run" into Baghdad, they portrayed it as a catastrophic American defeat simply with the right selection of pictures. Only burning American vehicles were shown, with multiple images of the same M-1 tank (the one and only US tank lost in the operation). The images of the M-1 were prominently labelled as destroyed American "armor," which coincidentally avoids the singular noun, obscuring the fact that the pictures were all of the same tank. Pictures of blown-up Iraqi tanks were shown immediately after the images of the destroyed M-1 and with their nationality not indicated. This combination of order and captioning invited the obvious but mistaken conclusion that the destroyed Iraqi tanks were American vehicles as well. Indeed, no other conclusion would have been reasonable if one were not fairly familiar with armored vehicles. American soldiers were shown only when they were wounded, running for cover, or fighting desperately, while the insurgents were shown only in heroic or triumphant poses. The accompanying text was straightforward and factual, the Iraqi forces had been slaughtered, but the selection of photos, supposedly to augment the facts, was worth a thousand lies. |
| Posted by: Atomic Conspiracy 2005-05-22 13:23 |
| #12 In citing politics, a "truer picture", as a reason to increase the publication of disturbing pictures from Iraq, these MSM leaders are as much as admitting that political considerations, and not the feelings of survivors and relatives, are the real reason for suppressing so many of the World Trade Center Images. |
| Posted by: Atomic Conspiracy 2005-05-22 12:57 |
| #11 Strangely enough, the press was squeamish about publishing the pictures of WTC victims in gory detail. I guess the press really isn't interested in the truth - just what suits its particular agenda of the moment. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2005-05-22 12:55 |
| #10 Just incredible. There folks are actually sad they are not showing dead Americans. This story says to me the media want to show dead Americans because that is their favorite thing. It makes them feel humanitarian and make them feel like our betters. "Now see this, children?> This is what happens when you go to war..." F*ck 'em. The end. |
| Posted by: badanov 2005-05-22 12:44 |
| #9 Never forget. |
| Posted by: gromky 2005-05-22 11:55 |
| #8 There is *no* way to show photographs of dead people, friendly *or* enemy, that reflects well on the US military. This is because the photograph in no way shows the events leading up to that "still life"--no context, intellectual, emotional, or physical. As such, photographs just demoralize the viewer. They have a morbid fascination only for those attracted to images of autopsies and fatal accidents--and those who seek to exploit them. How much sympathy would the public have for police officers if, when they killed someone, the dead body was displayed in the newspaper? It would not matter that the dead man was a heavily armed drug-crazed killer randomly shooting into a crowd. All the public would see is a gruesome mass of torn flesh. What other response could they have then revulsion, directed at the police? Couldn't the police have done something other than kill the poor man? |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2005-05-22 11:42 |
| #7 "Oh wait, that didn't happen..." I'm beginning to wonder: were the press gung-ho during WWII because they were genuinely patriotic? Or because, unlike wars since then, we were fighting on the same side as their beloved "Uncle Joe" Stalin? I really, REALLY wonder... |
| Posted by: Dave D. 2005-05-22 10:50 |
| #6 There's lots of thing that could be published and aren't. For example, videotapes of the meetings at which the editors of the LA Times decide what stories are going to be printed and which ones aren't. "One of our stringers says an army engineer battalion has built five schools in Iraq over the last year. Let's go with it." "You're kidding, aren't you?" |
| Posted by: Matt 2005-05-22 10:49 |
| #5 So, to update a very bitter jest about photographers.... "If you have a choice between adminstering first aid to a mortally wounded soldier, and getting a Pulitzer-prize winning picture of that soldier... what kind of film would you use?" |
| Posted by: Sgt. Mom 2005-05-22 10:41 |
| #4 Yeah, remember reading about this exact same debate 60 years ago: "Roosevelt lied, people died", "Germany never attacked us", "Let's show more pictures of US casualties from the Battle of the Bulge". Oh wait, that didn't happen ... |
| Posted by: DMFD 2005-05-22 10:41 |
| #3 Go read Mudville Gazette. Greyhawk nails it. |
| Posted by: Seafarious 2005-05-22 10:33 |
| #2 "Writing in a headline that 1,500 Americans have died doesn't give you nearly the impact of showing one serviceman who is dead," Van Hemmen said. "It's the power of visuals." If you want to have an impact-- a much more appropriate impact, at that-- why not show more of the pictures of the planes smashing into the WTC towers? And show pictures of the people jumping-- the people on the top floors who were forced to make one final, agonizing choice: jump, and die quickly on the pavement far below, or burn to death in the fires. And to really drive the point home, show those pictures you have somewhere of the bodies of those jumpers, where they landed *SPLAT* on the pavement. Because THAT is why we're fighting, Pim Van Hemmen: so it won't happen again someday, to you or perhaps even to one of your children. You DO want us to prevent that, don't you??? |
| Posted by: Dave D. 2005-05-22 10:32 |
| #1 I wonder how the press would feel if we started publishing photos of dead reporters. |
| Posted by: Robert Crawford 2005-05-22 10:29 |