Picturing the War

Kevin Drum alerts us to a report in the LA Times about photos of the Iraq War. You've probably noticed, but we're not seeing any pictures of dead American soldiers and very few of wounded American soldiers. We're seeing a lot of people grieving for soldiers, however. The article reviewed photos in six prominent dailies around the country as well as Time and Newsweek over a period of six months in 2004 and 2005. Drum and Matthew Yglesias are talking about the sanitized coverage and its implications, and they're correct. But one thing I found interesting was the contrast between the way those papers and newsweeklies covered American casualties and how they covered Iraqi casualties. It's not a surprise that journalists have fewer qualms about showing dead and wounded Iraqis, and I don't really blame them for that. But there was far less coverage of anyone grieving for the Iraqis.

For the Americans, the total number of photos shown in all the reviewed sources were 1 dead, 44 wounded, and 195 grieving. The Iraqi totals were 79 dead, 84 wounded, and 62 grieving. This difference in mourners strengthens the impression that the violence in Iraq ultimately isn't that big a deal. It's tragic, certainly, but the appearance of apparently unmourned dead and wounded, particularly in contrast to deeply mourned American losses, immensely undermines their impact. It's much easier to see people dead and wounded if we assume nobody's going to miss them.

Speaking of war coverage, earlier this week, Sidney Schanberg (of The Killing Fields fame) wrote in The Village Voice about the whitewashed war photojournalism. In his piece, he quotes David Leeson, one of the winners of last year's Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Journalism:

I understand the criticisms about blood and gore. I don't seek that. When I approach a body on the ground after a battle, I'm determined to give dignity to that person's life and photograph him with respect. But sometimes, as with my pictures of child victims, the greatest dignity and respect you can give them is to show the horror they have suffered, the absolutely gruesome horror.

That quote reminds me of another topic we've talked about lately, that of Emmett Till's open-casket funeral and the photo of his beaten and disfigured body that appeared on the cover of Jet magazine.