Editorial Discretion in Publishing Images
In World War II, for example, papers ran photographs of images like the one showing the marines at Iwo Jima . They did not (and perhaps they should have) shown Japanese-Americans looking out forlornly from behind barbed wire at internment camps. Both speak about an important truth of WW II. Raising the flag over Iwo Jima illustrates American courage, while the interment camps represent the worst in bigotry. The noblest images were allowed to frame WW II.
By contrast, the Vietnam War is now remembered in three negative images: the execution of a member of the Viet Cong by Nguyen Ngoc Loan of the South Vietnamese Army; the little girl running, after her clothes had been burned off by napalm; and Americans scurrying onto the last helicopter leaving the American Embassy at the end of American involvement.
Journalists and editors have a duty, of course, to report the facts and they are unrestrained in their efforts to do so. However, just because the press is unrestrained does not mean they do not have an obligation to show restraint. There are many facts and many photographs that can be assembled to tell a story. Many different stories can be told by combining the raw data of facts and images. And while the stories and images may all be accurate, without proper context and proportion they may not, in a fuller sense, be true.
It is the thesis here that the saturation airing of photographs showing prison abuse at Abu Ghraib prison are an attempt to drive public sentiment out of proportion to the entire context of events in Iraq. Breaking the story on the abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison probably did not require publishing the images. Almost certainly, a written or spoken story would have provided the facts without the emotional sensationalism of the photographs. If imagery was necessary to draw appropriate attention to the issue (remember the military had months before publicly announced the investigation of abuse charges), certainly only a couple of photographs needed to be shown. We did not need the parade of images day after day: images that may put American lives in danger and make negotiation with allies and adversaries more difficult. Is it not right for the news media to weigh these considerations in their coverage?
Were these images repeatedly broadcast and published under the pecuniary pressures of ratings and circulation? Were new images dribbled out daily as a part of considered
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