Week 3 Assignment 3

Sometimes we need to see it all. The mayhem, the destruction, the lack of humanity, and yes even death to fully understand the complicated nature of the world's problems. 

Without pictures of Nazi concentration camps, the mass graves at Srebrenica, or the almost neat stacks of skulls generated by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia we would have no way of knowing the scope of these tragedies. With out images, what does the death of 1.5 million Cambodians?, or 6 million Jews, or 9,000 Bosnians become but, numbers written on a paper. We must publish these images and because they disturb us. 

As for U.S war dead it has been more or less government policy since World War I to censor pictures of U.S war dead. The U.S military has at various times either relaxed its policy on this issue. Images of the war dead where shown in WWII and the U.S military continued to relax its policy in Korea and in Vietnam. 

During the war in Indochina, the U.S military felt that the media undercut support for the U.S presence with its coverage. During Grenada and the (First) Gulf War the U.S military tried to limit press access to the conflict zone in order to prevent this kind of unfavorable coverage. It is interesting to note that some of the most iconic images of the Vietnam are also very powerful and stay with anyone who has seen them. For example, the image of a young girl running from a napalm attack and a Buddhist priest engaged in self-immolation to protest the war come to mind. Also a photo of the Kent State shooting and of course photo of Nguyễn Ngọc Loan executing a Viet Cong prisoner both won Pulitzer Prizes despite showing death and violence.

These photos did more than just win prizes, they changed minds and opinions. Recently, while U.S newsrooms have become more careful about showing war dead, the Pulitzer Prize for photography has not completely shied away from this tradition. A 2005 Pulitzer Prize for photography went to an image of the bodies of American contractors hanging from a bridge in Falluja. Also Kevin Carter's 1994 photo of a starving Sudanese girl comes to mind as another controversial photo that won a Pulitzer prize.

We as journalists don't do what we do to win prizes or to become friends with those in charge of government censorship. We do what we do (in part) because we believe in the free flow of information and have faith in our readers to be adults.

We should keep this in mind when we do engage in self-censorship. I believe a lot can in some instances be gained from publishing these photos. As was gained ( I believe) by the publishing of the above photos I mentioned. I also believe and have previously mentioned in this course that online content by its very nature has more flexibility on this issue.