COUNTERCOLUMN: All Your Bias Are Belong to Us

From a reader in Texas:

How about explaining to us in a bit more detail why 'quite properly' The Army Times told the Army to get stuffed if a 'gentleman's agreement' and 'taboo' were in effect and they didn't honor it.

Sure. It was quite proper for the Times to tell the Army to get stuffed because we live in a society which upholds the freedom of a free and independent press, and it's not the Army's business to tell newspapers what to print. To the extent they try, then they ought to be taken down a notch.

And kindly explain how the only 'obligation' is to the story and the reader, rather than anyone else (thought experiment: that's your dead recognizable face your mother sees in the paper).

The highest obligation a newspaper has is to the truth. The truth is that soldiers die. The other truth is that all these soldiers have faces. I don't see how an informed electorate is served, in the aggregate, by putting pantyhose over the camera lens.

There are a number of immortal shots which show death imminent, or near imminent. I'm glad we had photographers around to document this, this, this, this and this.

It's just part of recording the truth.

Not to be deliberately hurtful to anyone. But to create a record.

There are two reasons why we haven't forgotten the Spanish Civil War. One is named Pablo Picasso. The other is named Robert Capa.

And kindly give an example of when having a recognizable face is, 'in and of itself', more compelling or necessary to tell the story, instead of just a dead body--include all necessary details.

Sure.

Be glad to.

My pleasure.

No problem.

There are lots of graphic photos of the dead and dying I am grateful we have. It makes it impossible to deny what happened. You can pay lip service to "never again," but nobody remembers Kurdish victims of Turkish genocide. And nobody would remember Wounded Knee without the famous photo.

Not all of these photos are Pulitzer-winners. But they all contribute to the record.

I'm not saying be cruel or deliberately pornographic (although there are times when pornography is the only way to communicate the scale of obscenity.)

But as a nation, we are not well served by being protected from truth, however ugly.

And we have an army of soldiers--not sacred cows.

Frankly, this piece of yours smells of the smug, self-important attitude that makes so many members of the press a pain in the ass

You wouldn't be the first to accuse me of being a pain in the ass. I hope you're not the last.

--and the very thing I've seen you complain about.

I don't think I've ever complained about a journalist accurately recording truth.

If this is really what you meant, you just dropped down a couple of notches with me.

Well, I don't know what you think I meant.

I don't think this particular Robert King photo was the one I'd go pounding the table for. But the photograph of Father Mychal Judge being carried from the site of the World Trade Center is, in my opinion, a national treasure.

We are at war. The whole nation, through its elected leaders, voted to go to war in Iraq.

So while some of us are minority, dissenting shareholders, we're all in the business of death.

Let's not shy away from it.

Let's not run a photo just because we can. But if there's a photo that's worth running, then editors should have the courage to run it.

Splash, out

Jason