Unseen Pictures, Untold Stories: How The U.S. Press Has Sanitized The War in Iraq

[Theregular]

Images of thousands of dead U.S. soldiers helped to turn the tide of public opinion against the Vietnam War, but now photo-journalists are even banned from military funerals at Arlington national cemetery. A report this weekend in the Los Angeles Times documented the extremely rare publication of photos of American casualties in six major newspapers during a sixth month period. Readers of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, St. Louis Post-Dispatch and Washington Post never saw a single picture of a dead serviceman or servicewoman in their morning papers. [includes rush transcript]
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Violence continues in Iraq on a daily basis. A car bomb in central Baghdad killed at least nine Iraqis on Tuesday. Meanwhile the death toll from a string of attacks on Monday has risen to at least 54. Over 130 people were wounded. Over 600 Iraqis have been killed in just over a month.
The latest attacks came as American and Iraqi forces are conducting a joint offensive in Baghdad. The US military announced that over 420 people were arrested in just over 30 hours during the sweep dubbed "Operation Squeeze Play."

Five US troops have also been killed in the past two days. But Americans almost never see photographs from Iraq showing U.S. troops killed in action. Images of thousands of dead U.S. soldiers helped to turn the tide of public opinion against the Vietnam War, but now photo-journalists are even banned from military funerals at Arlington national cemetery. A report this weekend in the Los Angeles Times documented the extremely rare publication of photos of American casualties in six major newspapers during a sixth month period. Readers of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, St. Louis Post-Dispatch and Washington Post never saw a single picture of a dead serviceman in their morning papers.

We're joined on the phone by L.A. Times reporter James Rainey who wrote the story. And in the studio we are joined by veteran journalist Sidney Schanberg, now the media columnist for the Village Voice. Schanberg has covered wars in India, Vietnam and Cambodia and won a Pulitzer prize in 1976 for his reporting on the rise of the Kmer Rouge and dictator Pol Pot in Cambodia. Last week, he wrote a piece in the Village Voice calling on journalists not to omit important information and images out of "timidity or squeamishness." He writes that the reason governments seek to censor and sanitize wartime coverage is "to prevent a public outcry against the war, an outcry that might bring down the administration." We are also joined by Pacifica Radio reporter Aaron Glantz. He spent months covering the occupation of Iraq and is author of the new book "How America Lost Iraq."

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/24/1341241&mode=thread&tid=25

 

[xandy123]

What's your point exactly?