In ethical dilemma confronted print and television news organizations a week ago. Given the war in Iraq, similar issues likely will arise again before it ends.
On Sunday morning, videotape broadcast by Al-Jazeera news, based in Qatar, flashed across the world images of five U.S. soldiers captured in Iraq. The tape also included shots of several soldiers who had been killed.
Before the day was out, the Pentagon had asked the U.S. press not to use shots of the POWs or of the dead until their families had been notified.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Pentagon officials also said that the taping the prisoners — which included intimidating, mocking interviews — violated the Geneva Conventions related to treatment of prisoners.
Editors at The Oregonian decided not to publish photos of the prisoners until families had been informed. They had no intention of showing the bodies.
Despite the lack of identification, at least a half-dozen other large U.S. daily newspapers published head shots of the prisoners in their Monday editions.
Others withheld the photos or — like The Oregonian — published a photo showing the mother of Joseph Hudson, one of the prisoners, holding a photo of her son after learning of his capture.
Television networks in this country also were mixed in their response.
On Tuesday morning, The Oregonian published facial shots of the five prisoners, all of them identified by the Pentagon, on an inside page. In the same edition, the newspaper also published photos of two captured U.S. pilots.
Sandy Rowe, editor of The Oregonian, said the newspaper rightly withheld the photos before families were notified.
However, after the names are released, she said, “It is responsible and appropriate to show them as individual men and women with lives and loved ones. It is necessary for us to do so.”
In fact, she added, the families of prisoners want their loved ones home, and public awareness can help push events in that direction, as it did with POWs held in Vietnam.
These journalistic questions emerge from the complexity of the times. Editors want to report fully without being disrespectful of prisoners or of the dead. They also want to help readers understand the weight of events.
Some readers want to know all facets. One reader last week asked, “Is the war news to be sanitized as in our last Gulf War?” Another reader thought the newspaper should have shown the bodies from the Al-Jazeera tape to demonstrate U.S. losses and suffering.
While editors debated these issues last week, the Pentagon turned to the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and Article 13 of Convention III. The article says, in part, that prisoners “must at all times be protected, particularly against acts of violence or intimidation and against insults and public curiosity.”
The conventions apply to governments, not to the news media. However, the media must consider whether their actions further the intent of the captors. In this case, use of footage of frightened, wounded prisoners being asked pointless questions seems to do that.
A few readers have asked if The Oregonian’s photos of Iraqi prisoners equals a violation of the conventions. The photos through late last week have been thought-provoking but not harsh.
In most cases prisoners were sitting, kneeling or walking, captured but not shamed. One photo showed a blindfolded Iraqi held from behind by one soldier as another appeared ready to cut the man’s plastic handcuffs — a picture of powerlessness, certainly.
None of these scenes of captive, perhaps wounded human beings is pretty. However, the reality is that the images will keep arriving, including photos of bodies. Late last week the newspaper published unidentifiable bodies of Iraqis and, in one edition, of a U.S. Marine.
The goal is not to shock but to inform, however somberly. Some decisions will offend some readers. That is the nature of journalism in a time of war.
