iraq

Navy Seals Sue Associated Press Over Photos: Dec. 28, 2004

“Six Navy SEALs and two of their wives filed a lawsuit against The Associated Press and one of its reporters Tuesday for allegedly revealing their identities in photos published in early December, according to a press release from the plaintiffs. The complaint, filed in California Superior Court, alleges that AP reporter Seth Hettena obtained a photograph in a personal Web site maintained by one of the wives of the Navy SEALs, which contains personal photographs. […] Hettena allegedly removed photos from that site and published them on Dec. 4, 2004, in a story stating that the pictures ”could be“ the earliest evidence of possible prisoner abuse in Iraq, the plaintiffs contend. The SEALs argue that the pictures ”actually depict special warfare operators’ standard procedures during covert operations. The Iraqis shown being captured in the photographs were leaders of anti-coalition attacks and Saddam loyalists.“ […]

”There was no need for the AP to publish the faces of the SEALs,“ Huston, the Morrison & Foerster partner who is heading the plaintiffs’ legal team, said in a statement. ”They added nothing to the value of the story. In fact, the SEALs showed more respect for the insurgents and terrorists that they were apprehending by obscuring their faces than the AP did for the Navy SEALs who were in Iraq risking their lives,“ he added. Since the photos were released, they have been published widely in the Arab Press, including on Al Jazeera, the plaintiffs claim. They are requesting injunctive relief, to preclude republishing the photographs, to preclude the publication of additional unpublished photographs, and to preclude the publication of personal photos by the Navy wife whose site was invaded, such as her wedding photos.”
[Editor & Publisher, via Reuters]

Barbara Kopple's “Bearing Witness” Doc: May 25, 2005

“Bearing Witness, which Kopple co-directed with Marijana Wotton, takes a critical look at wartime reportage, though it leaves control-room considerations aside in order to focus on the personal costs of unembedded frontline journalism. The five subjects include Molly Bingham, an American photojournalist who was imprisoned in Abu Ghraib near the start of the Iraq War; Janine DiGiovanni, a writer whose pregnancy complicates her admitted addiction to war correspondence; and May Ying Welsh, an American reporter for Al Jazeera whose self-described mission to ease communication between those on both sides of the war snaps the film's subject into focus. At 90 minutes, Bearing Witness is too short to go very deep into the lives of five women. But it's extremely effective in showing how the job of an alternative war journalist includes not just taking physical risks on a near-constant basis, but absorbing on a psychic level the unspeakable horror that too many of us have the temporary privilege to ignore.”
[Rob Nelson in City Pages]

Photos of US Fatalities In Iraq Rarely Published: May 22, 2005

“The young soldier died like so many others, ambushed while on patrol in Baghdad, Iraq. Medics rushed him to a field hospital, but couldn't get his heart beating again. What set Army Spc. Travis Babbitt's last moments in Iraq apart was that he confronted them in front of a journalist's camera.An Associated Press photograph of the mortally wounded Babbitt remains a rarity -- one of a handful of pictures of dead or dying American service members to be printed in this country since the start of the Iraq war more than two years ago. A review of six prominent U.S. newspapers and the nation's two most popular newsmagazines during a recent six-month period found almost no pictures from the war zone of Americans killed in action. During that time, 559 Americans and Western allies died. The same publications ran 44 photos from Iraq to represent the thousands of Westerners wounded during that same time. Many photographers and editors believe they are delivering Americans a muted portrait of the violence that has killed 1,797 U.S. service members and their Western allies and wounded 12,516 Americans. Journalists attribute the relatively bloodless portrayal of the war to a variety of causes -- some in their control, others in the hands of the U.S. military, and the most important related to the far-flung nature of the conflict and the way American news outlets perceive their role.”
[Detroit News]

Attempts to Control Controversial Photos Are Futile: May 20, 2005

“What's laughable is not the former dictator's skivvies, but military leaders' naivety about the media world we now live in. They don't have to like it, of course, but in a world of small digital cameras, photo cell phones, e-mail, ”citizen journalists,“ and several million blogs, for any organization to think that they can control photos like this is absurd. The Pentagon should have learned that lesson when it tried and failed to prevent publication of photos of flag-draped caskets of dead American soldiers coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan.

It's only a bit surprising that a mainstream newspaper chose to publish the leaked photos. But even if Sun editors had been more discreet and decided not to run Saddam in his underwear on their front page, you can be assured that the images would have turned up on some blog, then spread around the Internet in a flash. At which point, some mainstream media outlets would feel justified in running them as well, since they'd be ”all over the Internet.“

I'm not suggesting that these photos should have been published; the argument could be made that their publication violated the prisoner-treatment rules of the Geneva Convention. I am suggesting that there's little anyone could have done once someone with a digital camera or photo phone got access to Saddam's private prison space. We do not live in the same world as we did even a decade ago.”
[Poynter]

British “Sun” Prints Photo of Saddam in Skivvies: May 20, 2005

“The US military has condemned the Sun for publishing photographs of a captive Saddam Hussein and said it was ”aggressively“ investigating who took them. Today’s paper carries a series of photographs showing the former Iraqi dictator in his cell, including one

on the front page showing him in his underwear. Another shows him washing clothes under the headline ”Tyrant? He’s washed up“. The Sun says it obtained the photos from ”US military sources“ who handed them over ”in the hope of dealing a body blow to the resistance in Iraq“. ”Saddam is not superman or God, he is now just an ageing and humble old man,“ the paper quotes its source as saying. ”It’s important that the people of Iraq see him like that to destroy the myth.“ But in a statement issued today, the American military in Baghdad said the photos violated military guidelines ”and possibly Geneva convention guidelines for the humane treatment of detained individuals“. ”The source of those photos is unknown at this time. It is believed the photos were taken over a year ago.“ The US military said it was ”aggressively“ investigating to determine who took the pictures.”

Guardian: Sun Under Fire Over Saddam Pics
BBC: Sun Publishes More Saddam Photos
BBC: US Probes Saddam's Prison Photos

Picture Power: Death Of An Iraqi soldier: May 9, 2005

“The image shows a burned-beyond-recognition Iraqi soldier in the front window of a destroyed truck.The sun is coming in through the back of the truck and most of the surfaces in the image are burned and just torn up, so it's almost a black and white image although it was made on colour film. It was early in the morning, we had been up most of the night. There was supposed to be a ceasefire in about an hour, maybe an hour and a half. We had travelled east from Nasiriya towards Basra, hooked up with Highway 8 and we started travelling south towards Kuwait City. And we came across this... just a single lorry, kind of in the middle of a double-lane highway. I was with a public affairs officer with the US Army and he said: ”I don't really get my jollies out of making pictures of dead people.“ [...] He didn't try to stop me, he let me go and I just went over there. And he might have been the driver of the truck, he might have been the passenger, but he had been burned alive and it appears as though he's trying to lift himself up and out of the truck.”
[BBC - Warning: Very Disturbing Image]

Fernando Botero Paints Abu Ghraib: May 8, 2005

“Fernando Botero, Latin America’s best-known living artist, shocked the art world last year when he broke sharply from his usual depictions of small town life to reveal new works that depicted Colombia’s war in horrific detail. Now, Mr. Botero, 73, who lives in Paris and New York, has taken on an even more explosive topic: the torture of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib. Forty-eight paintings and sketches - of naked prisoners attacked by dogs, dangling from ropes, beaten by guards, in a mangled heap of bodies - will be exhibited in Rome at the Palazzo Venezia museum on June 16. ”These works are a result of the indignation that the violations in Iraq produced in me and the rest of the world,“ Mr. Botero said by telephone from his Paris studio.”

[New York Times]

Organization and Representation of Violence: April, 2005

“'Under Fire' was a one year long ongoing mailinglist project initiated by Jordan Crandall with invited participants (among them Susan Buck-Morss, Brian Holmes, Eyal Weizman .. and many others) discussing the role that representations play as registers of symbolic meaning and as agents of affective change. The online event was accompanied by a symposium and is now coming to an end through the publication of the collected material in form of the second volume of the printed version.' [Mind the GAP]

[Under Fire - PDF]