I have no idea why you think bringing the cost of war home through an image of caskets is a cheap propoganda ploy. I think it’s a fair, decent, reasonable and effective technique. Whaddya want, we should just go with a dry recital of casualty figures?
There’s certainly a distinction, and a mutilated body would be more disturbing than a coffin, but both will still upset some people.
As for a solution, I don’t have one, because I don’t see military censorship of combat zones as a problem.
:rolleyes: Do you know the least little thing about the journalistic concept of “news value”? Similar criticisms were levied at the American “muckraker” journalists of the early 20th Century (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muckrakers), for having the bad taste to call public attention to such unpleasant things as exploited labor and unsanitary food-production practices. But they were doing exactly what responsible journalists are always supposed to do, the things that make a free press of such immense practical value to a free society.
So, is jailing reporters who publish “secret” information censorship? Are reporters who publish secret information traitors? What about government officials who leak secret information? Are they traitors? Should they go to jail? Is sending them to jail censorship?
No . . . provided it’s done after the fact. But prior restraint on publication of the information is censorship. See the Pentagon Papers case. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_papers