The rules of the Geneva Convention are very clear when it comes to how war’s combatants must treat their
enemy’s prisoners. Bottom line: They must be treated humanely. Some details: No death, no endangerment, no physical mutilation, no medical or scientific experiments, no acts of violence, no intimidation, no insults, no exploitation for public curiosity.
It is either greatly heartening or wildly ironic that such rules apply to a time of utter carnage. But they do exist, and combatants are expected to comply with them.
Last week, when the first images of American prisoners of war were transmitted from the soldiers’ place of captivity, U.S. officials objected to the Iraqis’ display of the POWs. They invoked the Geneva Convention in their justified protests.
But what of news outlets and news consumers, who are not bound by the official rules of engagement?
The pictures did not exist in a vacuum. They were broadcast on television, uploaded on the Internet or printed in a newspaper, including this one.
The publication of the pictures didn’t exist in a vacuum, either. You looked at them.
All of which became the basis of an e-mail discussion among news ombudsmen throughout the country and parts of the world: What did our news organizations show of the captured and slain American soldiers? Remember, we’re talking about last Monday’s publications and programs.
Based on the discussion, the decisions to print or not to print were not arrived at lightly. And the underlying concerns resonated among the roughly two dozen news organizations that participated in the e-mail conference.
The bottom — and very fine — line for journalists: It is incumbent upon news organizations to exercise judgment in matters of news and taste all the time, especially in wartime. However, it is never the job of the news media to keep vital news off television, off the Web site or out of the paper, even in wartime.
So, at the very beginning of this war, when the first pictures of the dead and captured came through, how did some news outlets try to walk that fine line?
* In Sweden, Dagens Nyheter ran pictures of the soldiers on its front page last Monday. But the pictures were printed in the context of a discussion of the Geneva Convention. On a news page inside the paper, a picture taken from the Al-Jazeera video showed the body of a soldier, who could not be identified in the photo. ”This picture was shown as a proof of how the prisoners were treated and ran with an article which in detail reported how the prisoners were shown in the Al-Jazeera video,” said the ombudsman. The newspaper also printed a picture of Iraqi soldiers holding a white flag.
* In Turkey, Milliyet Istanbul initially printed two pictures of POWs, but no pictures of slain soldiers. The ombudsman also reported that most Turkish TV channels broadcast the interrogation with soldiers (CNN Turk showing the story only once). He said Islamist papers printed pictures of the POWs and the bodies.
* In Washington, The Post delayed publication of most of the POW mug shots until next-of-kin had been notified; the Pentagon made the delay request. The newspaper did print a picture of the mother of one of the soldiers, because she had made public her son’s capture.
* In Hartford, Conn., the Courant printed a picture of the bodies and five mug shots of the POWs on an inside news page. The editor who made the call said the photos were newsworthy and had even been mentioned by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on television. Also, the editor said, the quality of the photo of the bodies rendered them unidentifiable.
* In Canada, The Toronto Star printed an unsigned note to readers about its coverage: ”Images of war can be brutal. While many of the images seen so far from the second Gulf war have been filled with the awesome power of massive explosions and mushroom clouds, there is another, more terrible reality to war. And that is the human cost. Photos emerging daily from the conflict show the horrible price being paid by military and civilians alike, foe and friend. The bodies of American soldiers killed in action. The faces of captured American soldiers put on parade on Iraqi television. The faces of Iraqi soldiers capture by coalition troops gazing through the barbed wire of their prisoner of war camp. The agony on the faces of Iraqi civilians wounded in the relentless coalition bombing of Baghdad. We will include these photographs in our coverage as the complete story of the war emerges.”
* In Louisville, we printed the TV images of the POWs on an inside news page. We printed pictures of captured Iraqi soldiers on an inside page. In subsequent days, we have printed a couple of non-graphic pictures of injured U.S. soldiers. And we have printed a photo of an injured Iraqi child.
Courier-Journal Executive Editor Bennie Ivory said the decision to print pictures depicting graphic death and violence in wartime will be made on a case-by-case basis. Those are the same standards that apply to our non-wartime coverage of death and violence.
After this discussion, I touched base with Sydney Schanberg, the former New York Times correspondent who covered Cambodia in the 1970s and wrote ”The Killing Fields” based on that experience. He now writes for The Village Voice in New York City.
When I asked him about images and war, Schanberg said, ”This is my opinion only, but in general I believe people should be shown everything possible, with very few exceptions.”
Schanberg’s bottom line: ”We should know what people are waging in our name.”
Mayor online tomorrow morning.
Mayor Jerry Abramson is our online forum guest for the month of March. He’ll answer your questions online from 10 to 11 a.m tomorrow.
To take part in the discussion, or to post a question in advance, just go to the newspaper’s Web site and find the Public Editor Forum in the Reader forums section of the site.
If you’ve never taken part in a reader forum, you’ll need to register with a valid e-mail address and have that verified. There’s not much more to it than that.
After you’ve registered, click the log in” link at the Public Editor Forum, enter that, click on the ”Questions for Mayor Abramson” folder and post your questions.
