(Please do not search google for these photos as many of the sites they point to are virus traps) - this is a safe (albeit slow) blog)
Was it wrong for the AP to disregard the requests of the parents and DOD show this picture? Honestly I’m kind of thinking not. Americans often have far too whitewashed a notion of the horrors of war. Bringing it home with this graphic picture makes everyone think about the sacrifices of the soldiers, what’s on the line, and the fact this is not some HALO game.
So if the family didn’t want details of this Marine’s death publicized other than the fact that he died - that right should have been respected.
How would you like it if you died in a workplace mishap in a particularly gruesome way and your employer and the local paper gave your spouse no choice about whether or not to print the bloody photos? I don’t see much difference here.
I disagree with Mr. Moto. The public needs to see what really happens in the wars we’re fighting both to appreciate the sacrifices of those who fight and to analyze whether the cost is worth it. His link applies to the Navy Public Affairs office which necessarily has different priorities than the civilian press. And frankly I don’t think the picture is that graphic. It’s not a close-up. You can’t see the actual injuries, just some blood on the ground. In movie terms it’s not even PG-13.
When people support a war with their words and or their money, they should see the result of the choices they have made. This is one of the results. His death was not a private death. We should always see all of the truth of the horrors of war.
I am responsible for this man’s death. I paid my taxes without protest.
I quoted that link because it supplied the necessary procedures of the Privacy Act that must be followed. Because soldiers have a public job they have a diminished expectation of privacy - but it is not entirely ceded and when they die there are certain privacy rights their families enjoy that by law must be respected.
As for the desirability of these casualties being publicized - I don’t disagree at all and have argued in the past for better publicity across the board. But it shouldn’t be hard to do this with the permission of a family that wants to participate.
No. In fact, even the controversy itself is probably good. People need to be shown that there are real human beings fighting and dying over there. Just a list of names doesn’t cut it.
The Privacy Act regulates the conduct of the federal government. The prerogatives of the press are protected by the First Amendment. There is nothing unlawful about the AP’s behavior (although the family might try to sue for intentional infliction of emotional distress, they are destined to lose such a suit).
This is a quaint–and deeply deluded–idea. The interests of the people of the United States in determining the rightfulness of prosecuting a war outweigh any one family’s preferences regarding the publication of an image taken at the scene of a battlefield injury.
Apparently you’ve never heard of the Highway Safety Foundation. (Note: I am not likening the exploitative filmmakers to the Associated Press; if you think, however, that the analogy is apt, I’ll ask you for a demonstration of it, rather than relying on mere innuendo.)
No, it doesn’t. “The people of the United States” are made up families. A reflection of “the people’s will” is not monolithic and is necessarily disjoint. There is no reason to ride roughshod over one family’s sense of privacy and/or decorum when another family will not feel the same.
Note that I’m not advocating anything legal; rather, I’m simply expressing an ethical opinion.
Your ethical theory is that each and every family ought to hold a veto over what all the rest of the American people are permitted to see and consider in formulating military policy? What if there were no families that would permit the publication of the picture over which they hold this veto power? Would we say, “I guess the American people don’t get to see the consequences of war.”?
Your ethical theory apparently is incapable of distinguishing between sharing gratuitous details of another’s misfortunes at a church supper and affording people a serious look at a war that has had a profound effect on the lives of millions. Try to have a little perspective.
The very fact that they published the photo indicates to me that there are probably not plenty of similar photos they could have chosen instead.
From the link:
“In the photo taken while under enemy fire, AP photographer Julie Jacobson captured the image just seconds after Bernard was hit with a grenade in his legs.”
Perspective, huh? I’m simply acknowledging the difference between theory and practice.
Unlike, say, “What if there were no families that would permit the publication of the picture over which they hold this veto power?”, which is, from a practical point of view, a patently dumb question.
The AP was wrong, because at the time the picture was taken the man was still alive. So the death extinguishing privacy considerations would not have applied.