How Much Should The Military Constrain Journalists In Iraq?
Names, video, identifiable written/oral descriptions or identifiable photographs of wounded service members will not be released without the service member's prior written consent.That may not seem too big an issue at first, but imagine how it plays out in practice – or, better yet, let veteran Iraq photographer Ashley Gilbertson tell you. "They are basically asking me to stand in front of a unit before I go out with them and say that in the event that they are wounded, I would like their consent," Gilbertson told Carr. "We are already viewed by some as bloodsucking vultures, and making that kind of announcement would make you an immediate bad luck charm."
The military's argument is that it is only trying to protect the families of the soldiers – after all, would you like to open the pages of your local paper to see a picture of your wounded son on the battlefield? (Identifiable photos of dead American soldiers, incidentally, are prohibited altogether.) But journalists argue that the notion of protecting the families is a convenient excuse for the American military to suppress the reality of the war.
There aren't easy answers here – it comes down to balancing the rights of the family against the importance of telling the full story, not merely the one that the military wants Americans to hear. (We all know how that can go.) And it doesn't help that there are fewer and fewer journalists in Baghdad – As Carr notes, just 92 embedded journalists are there this month, down 24 from April – and that those left are increasingly constrained by the circumstances on the ground.
Journalists have a responsibility to be sensitive to the privacy and personal concerns of soldiers and their families, but they also have an obligation to tell the story of a war that has become increasingly difficult to cover. The military's guidelines limit journalists' ability to weigh these two considerations on a case by case basis, making it harder for them to generate the kinds of powerful and enduring images that can become icons of a conflict. Perhaps that's a justifiable trade-off in light of the rights of the soldiers and their families. But it means that the already foggy story of this war is even harder to tell.