The photograph was called intrusive, distasteful, disrespectful, offensive, shocking, bad for morale of the troops, a violation of right of privacy, sickening and wrong.
News editors were criticized as slime, idiots, disgusting, sadistic, feeble-minded and exploiters for using a soldier’s death to sell newspapers.
The color image dominated the top of Page A1 of the Richmond Times-Dispatch on March 6.
With snow-capped mountains in the background at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, an Army medic and a Catholic priest, their faces taut with concern, bent over a stretcher bearing a mortally wounded soldier. The soldier was mostly obscured from view.
The soldier was identified by name, rank and his hometown of Wade, N.C. He was identified further as the first U.S. serviceman to die in Operation Anaconda.
The priest, in his Army field uniform, was giving the soldier last rites. The caption reported the priest stayed with the soldier until he died.
Public reaction heard here by phone and e-mail was immediate and negative. Some of the 20-plus who protested had seen the picture in the newspaper. Others had seen the image on the T-D’s Web site or learned of it from a barrage of e-mails urging recipients to complain to the newspaper.
Said one woman who phoned the ombudsman’s office, “I’m glad I wasn’t that boy’s mother. I couldn’t get over it all day. I sat at my desk and cried.”
Most of the complaints centered on the soldier’s being identified. Members of military services who had been urged to respond in the e-mail campaign were the most vehement.
The picture and an accompanying article, which described the care wounded men received at an emergency trauma unit at Bagram Air Base, were provided by Newhouse News Service.
The photographer, John Berry, is from the staff of The Post-Standard in Syracuse, N.Y. The reporter, David Wood, is from the Newhouse news bureau in Washington. Both are on assignment in Afghanistan.
Danny Finnegan, a T-D deputy managing editor, has monitored the coverage by Berry and Wood for some time. Finnegan rated their reporting as having been more on top of the action than that from any other news service or major newspaper with journalists in Afghanistan.
So when the article on how men wounded in Operation Anaconda were receiving triage treatment was offered by Newhouse, T-D editors decided to purchase the story. Three pictures came with the article, and one was the dramatic photo used on Page A1.
Finnegan said he “knew some readers would find the photo upsetting,” and whether to publish the picture was discussed among a dozen key news editors.
“It is a grave photo, but it illustrates a grave situation,” Finnegan said. “No other image from Afghanistan has captured the reality of war like this photo did . . .
“We discussed the fact that the image was not graphic in nature [and] the focus of the photo is the aid and comfort being given by the priest and the medical technician.”
Military censors prohibited use of the soldier’s name in the original caption but did pass through that he was the first casualty of Anaconda. However, his name and the circumstances of his death were published in a news story March 5, the day before the photo was published.
The editor who wrote the caption used in the T-D phoned the Newhouse bureau to ask whether the name now could be used. He was told censors had lifted the ban and the name could be printed.
Curiously, so far as I could determine, the only complaints about the photograph have been directed at The Times-Dispatch. Editors at newspapers within the Newhouse organization who published the picture said they had heard no protests. (Since the photo was not distributed over The Associated Press worldwide network, few newspapers carried the picture.)
Newhouse’s The Post-Standard in Syracuse and The Patriot-News in Harrisburg, Pa., printed the photo in color on their front pages, and The Oregonian in Portland published the picture in black and white on Page 2. The Syracuse newspaper identified the soldier; the two other newspapers did not.
Managing editors at three other major Newhouse newspapers – The Star-Ledger in Newark, N.J., The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and The Times-Picayune in New Orleans – said not only had they not printed the picture, but they also were unaware it had been offered.
The photo was still posted on the Newhouse News Service Web site (www.newhouse.com) at the end of last week.
Editors at The Times-Dispatch and Newhouse newspapers defended using the photo as a portrayal of the reality of war, but I found the most telling support for publication in the observations of the T-D’s associate Virginia editor, Mary Anne Pikrone. She said she was 100 percent in favor of running the picture.
“As a Roman Catholic, I saw a mortally wounded soldier receiving a holy sacrament of forgiveness and grace in his last moments on earth,” she said. “So to me, the photo showed redemption and comfort.
“When you’re with someone who is dying, it helps to see that person is being cared for spiritually. I would hope readers would respond the same way.”
The controversy reminded me of the complaints heard after the T-D published the color photo of a firefighter tenderly holding the limp, bloody body of 1-year-old Baylee Almon after the Oklahoma City bombing in April 1995.
Publication was at first condemned, then strongly supported after Managing Editor Louise Seals wrote an explanation and said editors had found the image gripping and symbolic of the disaster.
Baylee’s 22-year-old mother summed up her feelings for the photographer worried that he had upset the family:
“We never would have known she was treated so good if you didn’t take those pictures.”
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The ombudsman receives and investigates complaints of unfairness, inaccuracy or imbalance in news and photo coverage. Write him at Richmond Times-Dispatch, Box 85333, Richmond 23293. Fax to (804) 649-6099 or call (804) 649-6458. Or send e-mail to him at: ombudsman@timesdispatch.com
