War coverage has stirred reader discontent, most notably regarding the publication on Monday of mug shots of five unidentified American soldiers who had been captured by Iraqi forces.
“I am shocked that you would print the pictures of the unnamed POWs in this morning’s front page,” one reader said. “Do you not have the dignity and respect for the families of the missing to first let the Pentagon identify them and contact the families before you take the liberty of surprising their families with this news?”
Another reader said she was “disgusted that your paper would publish photos of the American POWs when the Pentagon has not released their names yet. You have only subjected their families to more grief.”
The Star-Telegram’s standard policy is not to identify victims either in stories or photographs until we know that the person’s next of kin has been notified.
The decision to publish the pictures followed internal debate among editors over whether to do so. Arguments to withhold the photographs generally followed the readers’ points above. Other newspapers were called to find out their thinking about the matter. (Most of them published the pictures.)
Ultimately, the Star-Telegram was confident that the military would have contacted the POWs’ next of kin by the time the newspaper was delivered, said Rex Seline, managing editor/news. We also knew that the photographs had been disseminated worldwide earlier via the Internet.
In fact, Seline noted, the mother of one POW already had seen her son’s picture on a Web site based in the Philippines. She was at least relieved to know that he was alive, she said.
The main reason for deciding to publish the photographs was contained in a Page One note to readers in which we said that “we believe it is important for our readers to know their condition after capture, so we have chosen to run photos of their faces.”
The pictures were taken from Iraqi videotape that included footage of the bodies of several American soldiers who appeared to have been executed.
Some newspapers such as The New York Times and USA Today opted not to publish any images from the tape, including pictures of the POWs. They reportedly were struggling with questions about whether next of kin had been contacted and how graphic the coverage should be.
But an editorial on Wednesday defended the Star-Telegram’s decision, pointing out that publication of the photographs would hold Iraq accountable for the POWs’ well-being.
“Should the unthinkable happen — that they die after appearing in the news — then it will be clear that the soldiers were mistreated as prisoners,” the editorial said.
Although publishing the photographs struck some readers as thoughtless, editors found guidance from the Vietnam War era, when readers and viewers often were shown pictures of American POWs.
Once freed, more than one of those POWs said they were thankful that their pictures were made public because it probably helped them avoid a darker end that might have awaited them had they vanished along with any accountability that could be applied to Hanoi.
They also welcomed publicity that assured their families that they were alive.
I doubt that readers would have complained had pictures of the POWs in Iraq not been published on Monday. They probably would have not expected photographs of POWs whose identity had not been released.
But publication of the pictures internationally, whether on the Web or in newspapers, played an accountability card, conceivably helping to deprive the Iraqi captors of some free time in which to brutalize their captives. The public could see physical condition — a visual check on the soldiers’ well-being that could be visually measured later.
Deciding to publish the photographs was a difficult call, not made lightly. Editors can and do agonize over content decisions.
Whereas the Star-Telegram normally comes down on the side of families out of respect and concern for them, the priority shifted in this case.
We were thinking of the families, but we shared a common focus with them on what mattered most: the welfare of their captive loved ones.
