Wednesday, April 21, 2004
Editorship At the Edge of The Comfort Zone
Keep an on how the news magazines and other outlets cover this morning's awful series of bombings in Basra.
Many of the news outlets consciously decided to air the graphic, borderline pornographic photos of US security workers getting mutilated and strung up on a bridge like sheep carcasses. (Here's the one the New York Times picked for their front page.) Yes, news editors knew that they would be incredibly disturbing and hurtful to to the families of the victims to see their loved ones so desecrated. But those outlets who released them made a calculated judgement that the news value in the photos outweighed the sensibilities of a handful of families.
Fine. I'm comfortable with that.
In addition, news editors had to capture the singularity of the event We had already seen mobs of irate Iraqis and hundreds of burning cars. This event was different than what had happened hundreds of times before. (Well, something similar already happened in Mosul last year, but there were no compelling images available, so as far as the news was concerned, it didn't really happen. The Fallujah mob apparently had a PR guy with them who knew how to reach the media.)
Indeed, courtesy of the Poynter Institute, here's how the New York Times reached their decision on which photo to run.
The photos served to illustrate the viciousness of the opponent and the virulence of his hatred for Americans, and focused renewed debate on why we are there, and given that there is still a sizeable element in the Iraqi population willing to kill Americans and mutilate their corpses, whether we can ever truly win.
Cool.
I'm comfortable with that, too.
But this morning, terrorists incinerated two school buses full of Iraqi children. Yet the only imagery I've seen is of the sterile exterior of the bus, if the bus is visible in the frame at all.
Now, in this case, we don't have the downside of American families seeing their own loved ones charbroiled five million times over in the pages of Newsweek. The chances that the families of the young Iraqi victims are small, indeed.
Yet the media is keeping a more respectful distance.
Ok, I'm comfortable with that, too, in and of itself. But why the difference in policy?
Here's one reason:
The Fallujah photos focused the debate on whether we've accomplished squat in the year since Baghdad fell.
Photos of the Basra schoolchildren would focus the debate on how we can get at the bastards who did it, and tear their guts out by the roots.
That's the only way to fight and win wars. And the media is just not comfortable with that.
Splash, out
Jason
Many of the news outlets consciously decided to air the graphic, borderline pornographic photos of US security workers getting mutilated and strung up on a bridge like sheep carcasses. (Here's the one the New York Times picked for their front page.) Yes, news editors knew that they would be incredibly disturbing and hurtful to to the families of the victims to see their loved ones so desecrated. But those outlets who released them made a calculated judgement that the news value in the photos outweighed the sensibilities of a handful of families.
Fine. I'm comfortable with that.
In addition, news editors had to capture the singularity of the event We had already seen mobs of irate Iraqis and hundreds of burning cars. This event was different than what had happened hundreds of times before. (Well, something similar already happened in Mosul last year, but there were no compelling images available, so as far as the news was concerned, it didn't really happen. The Fallujah mob apparently had a PR guy with them who knew how to reach the media.)
Indeed, courtesy of the Poynter Institute, here's how the New York Times reached their decision on which photo to run.
The photos served to illustrate the viciousness of the opponent and the virulence of his hatred for Americans, and focused renewed debate on why we are there, and given that there is still a sizeable element in the Iraqi population willing to kill Americans and mutilate their corpses, whether we can ever truly win.
Cool.
I'm comfortable with that, too.
But this morning, terrorists incinerated two school buses full of Iraqi children. Yet the only imagery I've seen is of the sterile exterior of the bus, if the bus is visible in the frame at all.
Now, in this case, we don't have the downside of American families seeing their own loved ones charbroiled five million times over in the pages of Newsweek. The chances that the families of the young Iraqi victims are small, indeed.
Yet the media is keeping a more respectful distance.
Ok, I'm comfortable with that, too, in and of itself. But why the difference in policy?
Here's one reason:
The Fallujah photos focused the debate on whether we've accomplished squat in the year since Baghdad fell.
Photos of the Basra schoolchildren would focus the debate on how we can get at the bastards who did it, and tear their guts out by the roots.
That's the only way to fight and win wars. And the media is just not comfortable with that.
Splash, out
Jason
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