Power of photojournalism

KILKENNY -- Five national papers in Ireland carried Lynndie England as their front page picture two days after the image rippled through the blogosphere. Those who read the background stories behind the iconic image and the follow-up details about the soldier holding the leash learned more about the American military mindset than any puff piece from an embedded journalist accompanying the triumphant arrival of security forces into Iraq. The newspaper editors know there are more graphic images both inside and outside the walls of detention centres--the rise of European interest will lead to plump payments to any soldier willing to hand over their digital camera images to the photo editors.

Sky News appears to have an agenda item that brings a fresh explosive photo from Iraq into the nightly news reporting and from the looks of the things, the pervasiveness of digital photography and the speed of Net connectivity make it easy for a handheld photo to migrate from a dark corner of a war zone to Sky News Central. There's no need to pay a film lab for new discoveries made while developing prints for soldiers.

Economist magazine bleats for Rumsfeld's resignation. Rumsfeld bemoans the military's inability to control anyone with a digital camera who photographs atrocities and shares them with the world. To the control freaks in the neoconservative arm of the American government, the rise of the digital journalist is a threat to life. Expect to see heavy-handed military restrictions on anything with a camera lens in future deployments of military members into war zones. My Pentagon planning days remind me it's easier to impose clampdowns in the processing line than it is to control activities in the deployment area. General officers need to control information as much as they need to control troop movements. The only way they know to fight a media war is to take away the weapons--so goodbye cameras and adios cameraphones. That's started already--contractors lose their jobs when spotted with a camera pointed at a military aircraft in a deployment area.

The long knives are out for the people at the top who blindly pursue their military missions without due regard for basic human rights of people in the occupied territories. Donald Rumsfeld must take the hit for the significant damage done by his Department of Defense to the reputation of the United States.

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JD Lasica -- "Digital cameras as participatory journalism"
Vin Crosbie -- "Digital Cameras & Photo Phones Indeed Might Revolutionize Photojournalism"
AP -- "Digital photos change Iraq war perception"
Dan Gillmor -- "The power of pictures"
Luke Harding -- "Abuse of Iraqis rife says Red Cross" on front page, May 8, 2004.
New York Times Editorial -- "Rumsfeld must go" on May 7, 2004. My news aggregator found several calls for Rumsfeld's resignation from the St Louis Post-Dispatch, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, New York Newsday, Boston Globe, Minneapolis Star Tribune and the Detroit Free Press.
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Comments

[Rich]

Your point that the power of photojournalism is amazing is probably the understatement of three centuries. To site many images from conflicts past that have changed, or forged, public opinion: Larry Burrows' picture of a wounded Marine on a muddy Vietnam battlefield, Joe Rosenthal's picture on top of Mt. Suribachi in Iwo Jima 1944, John Paul Filo's pictures at Kent State University in 1970 and many more. These are examples of photographic journalism that convey feeling, emotion, hell and, most of all, story. The pictures that have come out of Abu Ghraib -- while shockingly distasteful, and an amazing example of how American service members need not behave -- are not journalism. They are evidence. Nothing more. Nothing less.