Freedom of the Press vs. Family Privacy

The Associated Press has caught a lot of flack this week after posting a controversial war photo. On August 14, 2009, an embedded reporter, Julie Jacobson, was with a Marine unit in Afghanistan shooting footage when they came under attack. As war photographers do, she kept shooting and captured on film a mortally wounded soldier, 21 year old Lance Cpl. Joshua M. Bernard of New Portland, Maine, just after he was hit with a rocket propelled grenade. In the photo, other soldiers are attempting to help Bernard. He was evacuated to a medical center and later died from his wounds. The AP decided to run the photo in its report because they felt that the photo “conveys the grimness of war and the sacrifice of young men and women fighting it.”

After the publication of the photo, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates voiced objection and found it "appalling" and a breach of "common decency". He has called for the immedeate removal of the image saying that it is disrecpectful to Lance Cpl. Bernard's memory. I happen to disagree.

We are sending men and women into war every day to fight on our behalf. The brave soldier out their lives on the line every second of every day. Since the war began in 2003, over 31,500 serving men and women have been injured and over 4,400 have been killed. This does not include Iraqi and Afghanis killed or allied troops. Yes, that is almost 35,000 soldiers dead or wounded in a war that we are currently engaged in. 35,000 men and women have put everything on the line and the Secretary of Defense is offended that a photo of a mortally injured soldier leaked out into the press?

Men and women are dying in a war every day that they should not be fighting. Men and women are dying in a war in which no end is in sight. Men and women were sent to war under false pretenses without adequate information and Gates finds a photo to be offensive? I find the entire thing to be offensive. Perhaps if people that are comfortably at home, sitting in their recliners, eating their KFC actually got to see what is really happening over there instead of hearing about it in abstract terms, they might be more engaged and involved in a discussion as opposed to blindly supporting a war for years on end. Perhaps seeing these graphic images might move people to write to their congressmen to tell them to bring our soldiers home. Perhaps we are too desensitized to what is going on over there and we are content to ignore that real people are really dying every day.



The effort to keep these disturbing images away from the public became all to apparent under the Bush administration after photographers were fired, after prompting from administration officials, for taking and publishing photos of coffins returning to the states. How could a photo do so much damage? Could it be that people might actually start seeing the casualties as real people and not just numbers on a ticker?



If Americans are going to sit back and go about our lives, acting as though nothing out of the ordinary is happening, perhaps this photo and others like it are exactly the wake up call that we need.