More than 300 pictures of coffins returning from Iraq were released this past Thursday, sparking debate over conflicts between the wishes of the Bush administration and those of media outlets running the photos.
A ban on allowing news organizations to take photos of the dead had been instituted by the Pentagon since the Persian Gulf War more than a decade ago. The policy was put in place to protect the privacy of families of the fallen soldiers.
However, the Air Force released its own pictures of the scenes after a website, the Memory Hole (www.thememoryhole.org), requested them by filing under the Freedom of Information Act.
The photos of caskets arriving at Dover Air Force Base, which once were kept from the public’s eyes, have now flooded newspapers and TV screens across the country. The impact of the images, however, remains up for debate.
“It’s a very vivid portrayal about just how bloody a month April has been in Iraq and that is not very good news for the administration. On the other hand, however, it is a very patriotic image,” UW associate professor of journalism and mass communication Shah V. Dhavan said.
More than 700 U.S. soldiers have been killed in Iraq since the war’s beginning in March 2003.
Many experts argue war photos have been some of the most powerful images in American culture, from the famous pose of the American flag being placed at Iwo Jima to stark pictures of casualties of Vietnam.
“A lot of our most famous photos of war and the toll of war are these stark, symbolic images,” Shah said, adding that war photos carry a “huge currency” with the American public.
Shah argues that any attempts to fight the release of the photos are “politically past tense” by now. He counters continued criticism by the Bush administration of the release of the photos by pointing to Bush ads’ use of pictures of the coffins of 9/11 dead.
“I find the piousness … a bit ironic. Maybe there is a political function to showing them. It reveals a fact that there is a toll taken over there. These are precious people we are losing. … Maybe some people don’t want to remind us of that,” Shah said.
President Bush remains optimistic about the progress taking place in Iraq since the war ended there almost a year ago.
“These are historic times. A free and democratic Iraq will change the world,” Bush said in a speech in Appleton, Wis., last month. “We’re now marching to peace.”
Some news sources were criticized as being a bit too eager to show the photos. Several media outlets mistakenly broadcast photos of coffins carrying the remains of those astronauts killed when the Columbia space shuttle exploded Feb. 1, 2003. Those photos were released with pictures of soldiers killed in Iraq.
Despite this, many still argue journalists who use the photos of the Iraq war’s dead are providing important coverage of the conflict and its effect on American lives.
“I think it does inform people’s understanding in a different way,” Shah said, adding, however, that the ultimate effect of the pictures being released remains difficult to predict.
