More observations about the war and war coverage:
Images. Nothing — not stories, not commentary, not even political cartooning — prompts a visceral reaction over war coverage more than the photos coming out of the conflict.
To a small segment of readers, images of graphic violence should simply be off-limits on the front pages of newspapers. While they may be acceptable inside, they should not appear on the front pages because children may see them and become upset.
Other readers count or categorize photos as being positive or negative toward the success of U.S. and British forces realizing their objective. In this measurement of “fairness” a photo of Iraqi citizens waving joyously at liberating American troops is fair while a photo of Iraqi citizens injured in a bombing raid is unfair.
Likewise, bombs going off in a Baghdad skyline, or a burning Iraqi tank on a Basra street are acceptable. But a front-page photo of Iraqi men lying wounded on a Baghdad street — like the one we ran Wednesday morning — is tantamount to treason, some readers believe.
Sometimes it isn’t just the photo itself that prompts the outrage, but the timing in which readers see it. For example, the Wednesday photo that captured the disorderliness and danger awaiting Georgia-based troops on that day, at that time, in Baghdad. The caption said the men were wounded after the car in which they were riding refused commands to stop as it approached an American tank.
But Journal-Constitution readers found it on the front page the same day they were watching thousands of Iraqi citizens on TV welcoming American troops into the heart of the capital city.
Thus, the photo was “anti-American,” some readers complained. It wasn’t. But by then it was a day old.
In three weeks of war, the front page images we have presented you have been dramatic, but largely bloodless. Most have put the death and destruction a great distance from the camera’s lens. Only two or three, including the one earlier this week, have put the inherent violence of war up close and personal.
We don’t choose what photos to publish based on their positive or negative attributes. We choose them because they are news and represent a visual account of war, in all its chaos, randomness, victory and sorrow. And in war, those images often change from one day to the next.
The death toll among journalists. Predictably, with the Pentagon allowing such unprecedented access, journalists will die covering the story. Since the start of the war, according to The Associated Press, at least 10 journalists have died while reporting from Iraq.
This is not to draw any comparison between the deaths of journalists covering this war and those of our troops who are fighting it. But, keep in mind, that much of what we know about the war is the result of journalists who volunteered to go there to tell the story.
Retracting my words. One of the benefits of having a weekly column of your own is that you get another chance to write what you really meant to say last week.
When I wrote a week ago that the war in Iraq was “obviously going to be dragging on,” many of you rightly took me to task for such a declaration, then only 17 days into the conflict. On the day it was published, U.S. troops had secured the airport in Baghdad. The sentiment diminished the remarkable progress the coalition forces had already made in the war, you wrote. A week later that’s even more apparent, with Saddam Hussein’s regime seemingly in shambles.
The sentiment I wanted to express was one of resignation to the fact that the ground conflict in this war — compared to the one 12 years ago in Kuwait — was going to take longer and incur more casualties than many had hoped would be necessary. Ideology aside, all of us want those numbers kept to a minimum
