Should a large photo of an Afghan father weeping over the body of his dead baby have been published as the main image on Monday’s front page?
About 400 readers called and e-mailed The Courant while more than 150 wrote letters to the editor — most of them furious at the decision to publish the emotional image from Kabul as the front-page centerpiece.
I wrote a column Tuesday, primarily to acknowledge the reaction and explain why editors found the photograph newsworthy. There was insufficient information at that time about how and where the photograph was taken to reach a conclusion about its suitability for the front page.
![[AFGHAN BABY]](../images/Afghanbaby.jpg)
That lack of detail — or context — denied readers the kind of information about civilian casualties in Afghanistan that editors hoped the Reuters photograph would convey.
The photo appeared in early editions with a caption that sent readers to an Associated Press article inside. For later editions, articles from the AP, Los Angeles Times and the Dallas Morning News (citing Reuters) were pieced into a “combined wire” article that ran next to the photograph.
Journalists do not have free access to U.S. military operations or to the territory under Taliban control. Both articles reported that 13 civilians had died in the U.S. bombing, according to witnesses. The child in the photo was among those killed, “reportedly by U.S. air raids,” the caption said.
The wire reports appeared to substantiate that this child had perished in the weekend bombing, said Paul Spencer, the assistant managing editor in charge that day. But there were no specific details that definitively tied the child in the photo to the bombings or indicated where the photo was taken.
Reuters had distributed other photos of children’s bodies laid out on a table, including the child whose photograph appeared in The Courant.
When asked this week for more detail about the photographs, David Viggers, Reuters’ London-based deputy global photo editor, replied:
“The photographs of the bodies were taken in the washing room of a local mosque where corpses are prepared for burial. According to survivors, the victims were killed in their homes by a single bomb, which exploded in the residential area of low brick and mud houses near the center of Kabul.”
The Reuters photographer in Kabul is usually “accompanied by a Taliban `minder,’ who dictates where he may and may not take pictures, but they do not attempt to censor” the work he submits, Viggers said.
The photographer “was unaware of any strategic installations nearby other than a Taliban anti-aircraft position, which had been destroyed at the start of the air campaign, and a nearby Taliban military hospital,” he added.
That the children’s bodies were being prepared for burial in the washing room of a mosque might have helped explain the scene and supplemented reports that they had been killed in the bombing.
Such details are unlikely to sway those readers who object to any front-page photos of dead babies. They won’t satisfy readers who said they would have preferred to see pictures of American children who lost their parents or photos of the remains of those killed in the attack on the World Trade Center. (The bodies of most of those killed on Sept. 11 were incinerated in the explosions and have not appeared in photographs.)
Still, civilian casualties are part of any war. Other aspects of the airstrikes have received extensive attention in The Courant — as have the anthrax infections and effects of the devastating Sept. 11 attacks on American civilians.
But any reporting on civilian casualties in Afghanistan, where the press is not free, needs to be presented carefully, especially a photo focused on one infant who died. The emotional photo could have been held until editors sought and obtained more detail from Reuters about how and where it was taken. A more comprehensive article about civilian deaths — that also explained the conditions under which writers and photographers are allowed to gather information — could have been researched and published.
A stark, emotional photo of one dead child was bound to elicit a strong emotional response — and not the one some editors may have expected. In the absence of further reporting and context, it was not a good choice for Monday’s front page.
