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 Greetings! You are reading an article from The Mudville Gazette. To reach the front page, with all the latest news and views, click the logo above or "main" below. Thanks for stopping by! June 5, 2006 Show Me the Money ShotBy Greyhawk"I don't like working in Iraq. The terrain is flat and uninteresting, the food is terrible, the weather is ridiculous, and to be honest, the people are not that charming or interesting." Every once in a blue moon during the course of the war in Iraq a reporter authors a complaint that there just aren't enough photographs of corpses of American soldiers appearing in the news. Here's an example from the LA Times from March 2005. It's not a phenomenon restricted to war - in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina members of the media complained quite vocally that restrictions placed upon them were preventing them from getting quality corpse photos of the tens of thousands of dead black people their fellow reporters were assuring them were lining the streets of New Orleans like the crowd at some ghastly Mardi Gras parade gone horribly wrong. So it's not war per se, but something else that brings out the lust for dead flesh in journalists - but obviously a few weeks of combat present more opportunities to build a collection of such potential Pulitzer-winning "money shots" than most crime beat cub photographers will have in an entire career. Of course, terrorists make full fledged beheading videos available to anyone who wants them, but apparently those really don't "deliver the goods" these do-it-yourselfers want desperately to provide - so non-Americans need not apply. For the rest of us, Today's New York Times says: Show Me The BodiesThat's just the beginning. Later you'll find a tribute to Shock Magazine's courageous theft of Mike Yon's photo: Shock, a new photo tabloid magazine from Hachette Filipacchi, ran a blood-red battlefield image on its cover and eight pages inside drawing parallels between Iraq and Vietnam. The photos were gruesome, but nothing that was not manifest in the pages of Life, Newsweek and Time during the Vietnam War.And ultimately a discussion with some photographers who seem to be despairing of ever obtaining a similar climactic image: Sitting in the Getty Images' offices in downtown New York, Chris Hondros, a veteran war photographer, thinks that practical factors are limiting pictures of American battlefield dead.American journalists, fighting boredom to bring you the bloody truth. Posted by Greyhawk / June 5, 2006 7:34 PM | Permalink 28 Comments |
November 26, 2010America@war [Greyhawk]
I think anyone who's ever pondered the "comment" option - once only available on blogs and bulletin boards, now ubiquitous on almost any web site - will appreciate this:
The so-called faculty of writing is not so much a faculty of writing as it is a faculty of thinking. When a man says, "I have an idea but I can't express it"; that man hasn't an idea but merely a vague feeling. If a man has a feeling of that kind, and will sit down for a half an hour and persistently try to put into writing what he feels, the probabilities are at least 90 percent that he will either be able to record it, or else realize that he has no idea at all. In either case, he will do himself a benefit. That's wisdom from the past, captured for posterity at the US Naval Institute, shared via the web on the institute's 137th anniversary. From their about page:
"The Naval Institute has three core activities," among them, History and Preservation: The Naval Institute also has recently introduced Americans at War, a living history of Americans at war in their own words and from their own experiences. These 90-second vignettes convey powerful stories of inspiration, pride, and patriotism. Take a look at the collection, and you'll see it's not limited to accounts from those who served on ships at sea, members of the other branches are well-represented. I'm fortunate to have met USNI's Mary Ripley, she's responsible for the institute's oral history program (and she's the daughter of the late John Ripley, whose story is told here). She also deserves much credit for their blog. ("We're not the Navy nor any government agency. Blog and comment freely.") We met at a milblog conference - Mary knew (and I would come to realize) that milbloggers are the 21st-century version of exactly what the US Naval Institute is all about. Once that light bulb came on in my head, I mentioned a vague idea for a project to her - milblogs as the 21st century oral history that they are. "Put that in writing," she said (of course - see first paragraph above!) - and here's part of the result. Shortly after the first tent was pitched by the American military in Iraq a wire was connected to a computer therein, and the internet was available to a generation of Americans at war - many of whom had grown up online. From that point on, at any given moment, somewhere in Iraq a Soldier, Sailor, Airman or Marine was at a keyboard sharing the events of his or her day with the folks back home. While most would simply fire off an email, others took advantage of the (then) relatively new online blogging platforms to post their thoughts and experiences for the entire world to see. The milblog was born - and from that moment to this stories detailing everything from the most mundane aspects of camp life to intense combat action (often described within hours of the event) have been available on the web... And et cetera - but since you're reading this on a milblog, you probably knew that. And you know that milblogs aren't just blogs written by troops at war, that many friends, family members, and supporters likewise documented their story of America at war online in near-real time, as those stories developed. The diversity in membership of that group is broad, the one thing we all have in common is the impulse to make sense of the seemingly senseless, and communicate the tale - for each of us that impulse was strong enough to overcome whatever barriers prevent the vast majority of people from doing the same. Everyone at some point has some vague idea they believe should be shared - we were the people who, from some combination of internal and external urging, found and spent those many half hours persistently trying to write it down. But where will all that be in another 137 years? Or five or ten, for that matter. That's something I've asked myself since at least 2004 - when I wrote this:
Membership in the ghost battalion has grown in the years since, and an ever growing majority of those abandoned-but-still-standing sites are vanishing. Have you checked out Lt Smash's site lately? How about Sgt Hook's? If you're a long-time milblog reader you know the first widely-read milblog from Operation Iraq Freedom and the first widely-read milblog from Afghanistan are both gone from the web. If you're a relative newcomer to this world you may never even have heard of them - or the dozens upon dozens of others who carried forth the standard they set down. If you have a vague notion that something should be done about that, (a notion I've heard expressed more than once...) then you and I and the good folks at the US Naval Institute are in agreement. Preserving the history documented by the milbloggers is just one of the goals of the milblog project, the once-vague idea that we're now making real. And it's a big idea, if I say so myself - too big to explain in one simple blog post, so stand by for more. Likewise, it's too big a task to be accomplished by just one person. So if you're a milblogger (and exactly what is a milblogger? is a topic for much further discussion on its own) I'm asking for your help. All I'll really need is just a little bit (maybe just one or two of those half hours...) of your time, and your willingness to tell the tale. We've already made history, it's time to save it. (More to follow...) Posted 4:02 PM | Permalink |
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The Mudville Gazette is the on-line voice of an American warrior and his wife who stands by him. They prefer to see peaceful change render force of arms unnecessary. Until that day they stand fast with those who struggle for freedom, strike for reason, and pray for a better tomorrow.
 
 
 Furthermore, I will occasionally use satire or parody herein. The bottom line: it's my house. I like having visitors to my house. I hope you are entertained. I fight for your right to free speech, and am thrilled when you exercise said rights here. Comments and e-mails are welcome, but all such communication is to be assumed to be 1)the original work of any who initiate said communication and 2)the property of the Mudville Gazette, with free use granted thereto for publication in electronic or written form. If you do NOT wish to have your message posted, write "CONFIDENTIAL" in the subject line of your email. Original content copyright © 2003 - 2011 by Greyhawk. Fair, not-for-profit use of said material by others is encouraged, as long as acknowledgement and credit is given, to include the url of the original source post. Other arrangements can be made as needed. Contact: greyhawk at mudvillegazette dot com  Tending Distant Far from hearth and home, watching What tales we'll tell When things grim Some distant sunset, vision fading Saluting fallen friends whose names - Greyhawk, Baghdad, December 2004 |
Interesting comment, because in a different thread a member of your amen chorus bemoaned the lack of bloody photos of what the insurgents are doing.
And then, of course, when any civilian ventures to make a comment about the war the inevitable response is, "You can't possibly know what it's like." This is true if no one will show us what it is like.
So, which is it? Do you want the media to cover the unpleasant realities of war or do you want the media to refrain from doing so? Or, like idelogues everywhere, would you rather simply talk out of all eight sides of your mouth on that and other issues, and denounce as unpatriotic anyone who should happen to notice your hypocrisy?
Just wonderin'
Dear WW,
Hmmmm, looks like somebody snagged a "Kos Kitchen Pass."
I think you're conveniently overlooking something: for many in the MSM, the war in Iraq is not about Americans and, sure as hell, not about Iraqis. Nope, it's all about THEM and THEIR needs.
Capisce, paisan?
I'm confused. Are you saying a "member of your amen chorus", a straw man, and I must all three agree or else I'm a hypocrite?
"Just wonderin'" above didn't read the post, did he? Well, I'll help him a bit; here's what he missed - a member of the press was quoted, bemoaning the fact that he might have to cover stuff that wasn't "fun" (hint - you have to read to the end to get to the "fun" comment), and made it fairly clear that "fun" included photos of dead Americans. Call it unpatriotic, or call it despicable; there's little difference in his case. He wasn't bemoaning a lack of photos of dead Iraqis. There are plenty of those, thanks to the "Allahu akbar" crowd. There will be more, and, if those who think that cut-'n-run is a clever solution for everything happen to get their way, there will be a lot more.
i'm assuming that input from "ww" was a moonbat parody, right? if not, what a delicious example of wilful ignorance: spinning the MSM's soft-focus gloss on terrorist behavior as just their heroic effort to spare us from the ugliness of war and its pornographic compunction to exhibit US servicemen's pain as just 'telling us how it is.' Is that it, ww? incredible.
"Some people don't have access to the major papers, but I think that if Americans are serious about wanting to know what is going on there, they can find out."
- hah. now that was good one.
Come on, Mark. Iraq sucks. Everyone who goes there says so. Why shouldn't a reporter be able to say the place bites the big one, too? If anything, it's going to generate more sympathy for the troops in that reporter's mind. Geez.
Greyhawk, the so-called Milbloggers are forever getting their panties in a knot over the media. So are the lefties, by the way.
If they file pictures 'n stories about the insurgency's violence against civilians and/or U.S. troops, then the wingnuts accuse 'em of focusing on the bad news and even disrespecting American troops by showing them dead. If they don't file those stories, then the wingnuts accuse 'em of ignoring the atrocities committed by the terrorists, and the military nutscratchers say no one can ever understand what it's like so shut up why don't you.
If the media goes an interviews a dead marine's crying wife, they're exploiting the grief for profit. If they don't do it, they're ignoring the pain felt by the families. The only thing that would satisfy you is a propaganda channel. Well guess what? You have one. It's called Fox News. So what are you bitching about?
Oh, and if the media file pictures 'n stories about the insurgency's violence, and show that crying marine's wife, the lefties will think it's all part of the propaganda drumbeat on behalf of the Liar-in-Chief. If they don't do it, the lefties will say the media are trying to sanitize the war.
My complaint with the media is different than that stuff. I think they've become slaves to unrealistically high profit margins and as a result they've cut back their spending on reporting. Because of all that, they do the easy stories. They're not well enough staffed to do the hard ones.
I also blame the public, which is lazy, easily distracted, irresponsible and selfish. And then we have the ideologues on both sides, who resolutely refuse to look facts in the eye until someone gives them permission. In the case of the so-called Milblogs, that someone being the White House and its propaganda arm, Fox News.
And don't start thinking I'm some fan of the NY Times or Washington Post. They're just as gulty as Fox News of rubber stamping the Liar-in-Chief's press releases, especially in the runup to the war. We've been ill-served by all kinds of institutions.
Yes, people have different opinions. But I want you to explain how unless people agree with people they disagree with they are hypocrites, per your first comment.
"There are so many troops and so few press. You have a very small chance of witnessing a death..."
Let's try a more accurate version of that statement:
"There are so many troops and so few deaths. You have a very small chance of witnessing a death."
Martin,
"Bingo" as they say.
Notice that in complaining about this issue, the NYT invokes the Tet Offensive, citing it as "the bloody yardstick". That's no coincidence. The Tet Offensive was a victory for U.S. forces, but journalists used "photos showing dozens of dead American soldiers stacked like cordwood" to convince the American people that it was a defeat, undercutting civilian support for the war effort and ensuring that the U.S. would lose the war.
The news media remember this, and they want to do it again. The NYT is openly saying so. But the U.S. armed forces also remember, and they are not going to allow it this time.
Skulls Before Cities, The Belmont Club's take on this.
I think the NYTimes is most interested in seeing...
MORE (pronounced Mhore)
American bodies.
Thank you for bringing this to our attention Greyhawk.
I don't think the issue is to show or not to show photos of dead Americans. The issue is the cynicism and callousness shown by Mr's Hondros and Carr in this article.
Carr actually attempts to equate movie violence to real people being killed.
There are certainly times when showing the horrors of war in a way only photographs can depict are appropriate. Photo journalists who take such photos have a sacred responsibility to the dead and their surviving families to be sure they are viewed in context and not shown simply to exploit the death/s of heroes.
Americans were once known as the 'Ugly Americans', now about 45% (the left wing) are known as the 'Cowardly Americans'. Why would any country want to pardner with the U.S. in the future since they would be allied with cowards? This will come back to bite the left wing dim-wits one of these days.
Martin has it right.
2500 deaths over 3 years, a million troops cycled in and out of Iraq over that period. Odds are a journalist could be there for 6 months and not see an American killed. I bet they see plenty of people killed by the Insurgents. Of course, that is not the story they are pushing.
I think it's pretty clear that the NYT wants to show more dead Americans so that we'll become disenchanted enough to pull out the troops. They want to demoralize us.
During WWII FDR forbade news organizations from showing dead Americans. Was that because he didn't want us to know the truth? Uh, no. It was because he knew the effect it would have on people.
WW,
Your sneering tone makes it harder for people to listen to you. That's a hint from a lesson I still haven't fully learned.
It's always better to present your case as graciously as possible. If you asked your questions differently, you might get more thoughtful responses.
WW,
This is just an FYI, but using phrases like liar-in-chief don't show how smart you are or make people cringe at how 'devastating' an insult that is. It's actually a pretty sophomorish phrase that most 3rd graders could come up with.
It actually detracts from anything substantial you might have to say because it says you're more interested in being seen as clever and witty than you are interested in having your views discussed.
Oh, and seriously, from the way your posts read, I could walk into a room your in, say the words 'fox news' and you're head would explode.
Get a grip man.
Perhaps we need more photos of dead reporters?
Journalist are an odd lot as are photographers. If journalist were as intent on listening as they were on tweeking their prose to impress their bosses with their writing skills they might come closer to the truth in their stories.
Many photographers have a rule "keep shooting whatever the case". There are stories of some photographers laying down their cameras to help victims or people in imminent peril. They have recieved praise from some but also criticism from others in their profession.
I was involved in emergency services for over 20 years and responded to some gruesome incidents. We regularly cordoned off the scene when removing the severely injured and dead. We had a close working relation with the local press and they often photographed the scene but this was more for the accident reconstruction and/or the coroner investigation. I don't know of any of those photo ever making it into the newspaper. But more than anything, the scene was cordoned off out of respect for the dead and injured. Such a traumatic event shouldn't be for public display. Be it in your home town or a war.
My feeling is that the soldiers are responding in a similar way. The dead and injured are their friends and you're not going to let your friend's fate end up as a pulitzer prize nomination.
I would suppose that the quality of professional of the photographers working in Iraq and afghanistan runs the gauntlet. One thing the soldiers and marines might do is query them on whether they intend to keep shooting regardless of what happens. If the answer is yes then they should be informed that the soldiers intend to do the same thing. If the photographer goes down, the soldiers will keep shooting too(at the enemy) and the photographer will be left to his own devices.
I like Tbird's idea above all. The operative phrase here should be "don't bite the hand that feeds (or protects) you."
Subsunk
There are certainly times when showing the horrors of war in a way only photographs can depict are appropriate. Photo journalists who take such photos have a sacred responsibility to the dead and their surviving families to be sure they are viewed in context and not shown simply to exploit the death/s of heroes.
Translation: Clear it with the Ministry of Propaganda first.
It's always better to present your case as graciously as possible. If you asked your questions differently, you might get more thoughtful responses.
I don't think so, Trevor. The so-called Milblogosphere exists almost exclusively as a megaphone for the far right wing of the Republican Party. Military issues are just the vehicle du jour, and often not even that, as illustrated by the milbloggers' near total silence on the failings of veterans health care, the cuts in veterans benefits and the Liar-in-Chief's never having attended a single military funeral.
Not to mention the wasting of nearly 2,500 military lives in a war started on a lie and mismanaged from the get-go. Nope, can't talk about any of that, but the milbloggers can go on and on and on and on and on about 19 deaths in Somalia.
You see, it's not about the lives or about competence or even about U.S. victory. For you and your kind, it's entirely about the partisan identification of the commander-in-chief. If it's a Republican, you're willing to fight to the last drop of someone else's blood to cover up his incomptence.
WW,
They have medications that can stop those voices in your head bro.
Yes, I'm sure, but I think in my case I will need to anti-medication medication. Faux News has polluted the air and our precious bodily fluids. ;-)
WW,
Fair enough bro. Glad to see ya have a sense of humor.
In an above comment, Trevor says to Willy
To which Willy responds:Of course, Trevor is an American soldier currently serving in Iraq. But that's the danger you run pretending this or any other milblog is a political site, and insulting commenters here accordingly. The Party talking points you cut and paste into a response wind up making you look very foolish (at best).