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WASHINGTON - Families of America’s war dead will be allowed to decide if news organizations can photograph the homecomings of their loved ones, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday.
Gates said he decided to allow media photos of flag-draped caskets at Dover Air Force Base, Del., if the families agree. A working group will come up with details and logistics.
The new policy reverses a ban put in place in 1991 by then President George H.W. Bush. Some critics contended the government was trying to hide the human cost of war.
"We should not presume to make the decision for the families — we should actually let them make it," Gates said at a Pentagon news conference.
Controversy in America over photos of war dead goes back as far as the earliest battlefield photography, said David Perlmutter, a documentary photographer and journalism professor at the University of Kansas.
Photography pioneer Matthew Brady was believed to have arranged battlefield death scenes during America's bloody mid-19th century Civil War. During World War I much of the coverage of the war was censored, as it was in World War II before President Franklin D. Roosevelt decided the public needed to see how its soldiers were suffering to avoid complacency.
Vietnam brought the war home, however, in new ways, as television film footage caught the daily grind and blood of war. The coverage was blamed in part for the loss of public support.
An issue in Afghanistan?
The issue could come into play for Obama. Though deaths in Iraq are down, the new president plans to send 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan, which could mean a steady number of soldier's bodies coming back through Dover in transfer cases.
Journalists should be thoughtful if the ban is overturned and avoid excessive coverage, said Kelly McBride, an ethics expert at the Poynter Institute journalism think tank.
"The temptation is that because we can, we will," she said. Journalists, excited by the access, could jump at the new opportunity to take photos and release a flood of images that might exaggerate the number of deaths, she said.
"It would be possible to have more coffin photos than homecoming photos, when the reality is that there are more live bodies coming home than dead bodies," she said. "There is an obligation to tell the truth in as complete and full a picture as possible, and coffin photos are part of that."
According to an informal survey of its members by the group Families United, which says it represents 60,000 military families, a majority opposed changing the policy.
https://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29410258/
