The AP has decided to print the photo of a young marine as he is dying, despite the expressed wishes of his family and the Secretary of Defense that the soldiers privacy be respected and the photo not be released. The AP is doing this in the name of “journalistic realism” and “telling the real story of the Afghan war.”
The AP reported that the Marine’s father had asked, in an interview and in a follow-up phone call, that the image, taken by an embedded photographer, not be published.
The AP reported in a story that it decided to make the image public anyway because it “conveys the grimness of war and the sacrifice of young men and women fighting it.”
The photo shows Lance Cpl. Joshua M. Bernard of New Portland, Maine, who was struck by a rocket-propelled grenade in a Taliban ambush Aug. 14 in Helmand province of southern Afghanistan, according to The AP.
Gates wrote to Thomas Curley, AP’s president and chief executive officer. “Out of respect for his family’s wishes, I ask you in the strongest of terms to reconsider your decision. I do not make this request lightly. In one of my first public statements as Secretary of Defense, I stated that the media should not be treated as the enemy, and made it a point to thank journalists for revealing problems that need to be fixed, as was the case with Walter Reed.”
“I cannot imagine the pain and suffering Lance Corporal Bernard’s death has caused his family. Why your organization would purposefully defy the family’s wishes knowing full well that it will lead to yet more anguish is beyond me. Your lack of compassion and common sense in choosing to put this image of their maimed and stricken child on the front page of multiple American newspapers is appalling. The issue here is not law, policy or constitutional right, but judgment and common decency.”
……………Morrell said Gates wanted the information about his conversations released “so everyone would know how strongly he felt about the issue.”
The Associated Press reported in a story about deliberations about that photo that “after a period of reflection,” the news service decided “to make public an image that conveys the grimness of war and the sacrifice of young men and women fighting it.
“The image shows fellow Marines helping Bernard after he suffered severe leg injuries. He was evacuated to a field hospital where he died on the operating table,” AP said. “The picture was taken by Associated Press photographer Julie Jacobson, who accompanied Marines on the patrol and was in the midst of the ambush during which Bernard was wounded. … ‘AP journalists document world events every day. Afghanistan is no exception. We feel it is our journalistic duty to show the reality of the war there, however unpleasant and brutal that sometimes is,’ said Santiago Lyon, the director of photography for AP.
It is the policy of essentially every mainstream news organization, including the AP, NOT to print photos that show the reality of abortion, and what aborted unborn human beings look like. They won’t show what aborted human beings look like after being aborted at 9 weeks, or 15 weeks, or 24 weeks, or 30 weeks. It would be “too disturbing,” it seems. But they will show other, equally or even more distubing photos without apparent restraint, whenever it fits the news agenda of the day.
Some newspapers won’t even run print ads paid by pro-life organizations if they tell the truth too accurately about abortion, and they may even object to accurate descriptions of abortion, let alone photos of the killed human being that results from it. I would go further with this… but you already know it’s true, don’t you? Because you have just about never seen a picture of an aborted baby in any major newspaper, newsmagazine or network TV broadcast, have you? But you have routinely seen bodies piled high in Holocaust photos, people being shot in the back of the head in executions by totalitarian regimes, and many other horrible, but true, events.
The cognitive dissoance is stunning, because on the one hand the mainstream media buys into the lie that aborted babies aren’t really people, just some kind of thing that could have developed into one… and on the other hand, it is apparently more disturbing to them to show a photo of an aborted fetus than to show the murder of someone they DO accept as a full human being. I guess it’s just too disturbing to show a photo of the death of a non-person.
It seems that photographically telling the truth about abortion is NOT on the news agenda…. but showing the last moments on earth of a mortally wounded soldier IS.
Pray for the family of the deceased soldier, as their pain is increased by this barbarous decision.
