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Reporter says he's being blacklisted by Marines for showing the "cost of war" by posting the picture of a dead marine on his blog (all be it, behind a wall with warnings) because war is "too sanitized". Marines say he violated his agreement when embedding. Reporter says he posted it after the marine's family was notified. Marines say he gave the enemy valuable information on success of actions. Reporter says that information is all over the news and web.
My lone question to the reporter: if you die in Iraq, should the marines take a picture of your dead body and post it on the web where your mom, dad, wife or children might see it (considering, if you are dead in Iraq, there is a better than 50% chance it would be a closed casket due to the probable cause of death)?
If you didn't see it anywhere else or catch it in the post below, THE LARGEST RE-ENLISTMENT CEREMONY.
Majors Perspective has a conversation with a man from Pakistan. - Kat
*A term of art from the artillery. Harassment and Interdiction Fires. Back in the day, when you could just kill people and break things without a note from a lawyer, they were pre-planned, but to the enemy, random, fires at known gathering points, road junctions, Main Supply Routes, assembly areas, etc - to keep the bad guy nervous that the world around him might start exploding at any minute. Not really relevant to today's operating environment, right? But, it *is*. The UAVs we fly over Afghanistan and Pakistan looking for targets of opportunity are a form of H&I fires, if you really want to parse it finely. We just have better sensors and fire control now. Of course, now I have to call them UAS's, because someone got a Legion of Merit for the name change.Anyway, I call the post H&I Fires because it's random things posted by me and people I've given posting privileges to that particular topic. Another term of art that might be appropriate is Free Fire Zone.
Then write a story about how others were helping the injured and removing the dead, this vulture was trying to make a career for himself.
The only reason why ethics existence, is because of the Circle of Justice, otherwise known as Meta-Golden Ethics.
Don't do things to weak people, unless you want stronger people to do the same to you. Don't post propaganda stories about big bad Marines and Army soldiers trying to do good, and then expect your efforts to be seen only in a "sanitized" perspective.
If war is horrible enough to deserve to be photographed, then the photograph that glorifes in other people's death should also be photographed and made known to the world. Unless, of course, the photographer is supposed to be hidden and immune from something nobody else is when they are on camera.
But here we have a reporter who agreed to embed with the Marines, presumably knowing full well the rules for doing so. When he decides he doesn't like the rules, he breaks them. And then he complains that the Marines want him to follow the rules. I guess I don't need to follow any rules i don't like either. What a narcissistic tool.
Call me callous, but I'm not that upset by posting pictures of dead Americans. BillT mentions the notorious Iwo photos. Then there were the photos of the streets of Mogadishu.
That is because, as I mentioned at blackfive, photos can be used for any number of purposes. It can be used to show the horror of war and gain support for jihadists and terrorists and dictators that have devoted their entire lives to creating horror. Or it can be used to bolster people's morale in fighting such individuals and causes.
Photos of your dead can demoralize you, uplift you, make you sad, make you angry, make you any number of emotional states in existence. Part of it depends on your perspective and part of it depends on the intent of the editor/photographer.
Remember Cindy Sheehan when she was surrounded by like 25 reporters and camera equipment, yet the MSM used only a cropped angelic profile of her and only her face? That's editing and photoshopping lies right there.
So there seems to be some contention that Zor broke any of the imbed rules in the first place. Even if he didn't, I wholly understand why the Marines Corps wanted to get rid of his arse, and you will know why too if you read his blog.
I couldn't just sit by and take pictures.
Just like I couldn't embed with the enemy of my people to get a story, and report on an ambush that killed my side's guys.
Of course, that's why I'm not Dan Rather, I s'pose.
I have a side. Big one, too, in profile.
Despite their constant assurances of "objectivity" and the refrain of being a "citizen of the world".
<B>I dunno 'bout all this, since I'm in crack-crazed cat-herding hell... but I do know one thing that would make me a bad combat photographer.</b>
That's cause your biased and bigoted and unable to take yourself out of the picture of the camera. A photographer's duty is to take shots of events, not to be in the center of such photos causing news.
There is a higher calling than actual participation in this reality, John. You must achieve the Zen like qualities of the journalist, in order to even be considered their equals.
BUT. That does not mean he had the right to take and post the pictures after the Marines told him not to- and he agreed to their terms. If you want to be an embed, you must first get IN bed- with the rules of the unit you're with. Clearly he disregarded that agreement and now he's crying foul.
http://www.bookwormroom.com/2008/06/13/watchers-council-results-2/
None of my pistures were ever that good. Ok maybe one that used for a recuiting campaign but I got more hits with the firestick.
I remember the napalm incident in which a young girl, naked and burned, was seen crying out in agony as she ran away from bombs.
http://shardsofphotography.blogspot.com/2005/09/nick-ut-and-napalm-girl-photo.html
Few people know the backstory because it was an inconvenient truth that would have interfered with the anti-war usage to which the photo was placed into.
Photographers are censored, more by their publishers and editors than the military, because that is how it has always been. Photos go for who is going to pay them. If people won't pay for certain photos, those photos get self-censored in the process and not published. But on a general explanation, the military is camping down on journalists because the proponents of imbedding in Bush's administration were politically torn apart in the aftermath of OIF 1. They lost much of their influence and confidence that the media could be entrusted with national security or national morale matters. Perhaps Rumsfeld and the Joint Chiefs didn't have FDR's ruthlessness in making Hollywood, the media, judges, etc bend their knees in fealty and obedience. But the end result is still the same.
The military does not trust photo journalists to get the story right, so they clamp down on the release of pictures. They even do it sometimes with Michael Yon and they definitely have done it concerning other stories with Yon, to America's detriment. Zarq man's letter, for example. You could have let Yon have the scoop and thus acquire a counter-insurgent reaction force where people had to pay attention to him because he was the guy with the goods. But no, you had to let the MSM have it by waiting.
A lot of good combat footage was taken by military individuals themselves, serving as photographers and cameramen. Why that isn't an actual official position anymore, seems rather inconvenient in today's hyper extended information and propaganda battlescapes.
Nick Ut recalled in a 1999 interview: "When we (the reporters) moved closer to the village we saw the first people running. I thought 'Oh my God' when I suddenly saw a woman with her left leg badly burned by napalm. Then came a woman carrying a baby, who died, then another woman carrying a small child with it's skin coming off. When I took a picture of them I heard a child screaming and saw that young girl who had pulled off all her burning clothes. She yelled to her brother on her left. Just before the napalm was dropped soldiers (of the South Vietnamese Army) had yelled to the children to run but there wasn't enough time."
Nick Ut used two cameras to photograph the scenes in front of him - his Leica and a Nikon with a long lens.
I do not know the military details, but it can be summed up as"NVA invades and attacks South Vietnam, producing refugees"
"RVN responds with air strikes that happen to hit a family that didn't realize that the NVA was in the area and they needed to escape the war zone"
"By coincidence or just because there were a bunch of reporters seemingly on the roads going somewhere, this incident was caught on camera"
The lessons about how if you don't bomb the NVA in their home towns, then you're going to have to bomb them in South Vietnam when there are civilians they can use as shields, was never told, described, or reflected upon.
Nor was the compassion and help offered by an America, whose nation had already withdrawn from Vietnam, known when the photo was published.
Such things don't decide the course of wars. They are rather, more like the feather that broke the camel's back. You never know when enough will be too much.
Now they are upset he posted pics of a dead Marine?
Someone needed to think this one out a little more clearly. The guy has a link to the ground rules posted at his blog.
http://www.zoriah.net/blog/files/media_hold_harmless_ground_rules_updated_1feb08.pdf
They have charged him with violating this contract, I don't see it. He's made his case over at his blog vis a vis timing etc. I will wait for the rest of the blogsphere to uphold or debunk his defense.
Other statements on the blog seem to make him out to be quite the asshat. However, in this one particular instance I can't fault his action. If the Marines don't want pics of dead Marines to be taken or made public under any circumstances, then put that in the ground rules. If they don't want photojournalists taking pics then don't allow them the means to do so.
In the end, it may not even be the "official rules" that made him persona non grata and a "threat", but the perceived injury/offense to the unit he was with made the situation unworkable. There is that "quid pro quo" in the "decency" category of an honest request. That is what this man seems to have violated in the idea that he was going to show something new and news worthy in the devastated body of the marine. It was neither new nor earth shattering "news worthy" and should have been considered in that reflection.
In short, this man was simply trying to become part of a cause or the story instead of simply telling a story. In that, he damaged his relationship with the unit he was with and the Marines as a whole.
No, I don't mean that these men would be so unprofessional as to put the man's life at risk or outright harm him, but I do mean that most units would likely refuse to work with him (ye old scuttle bucket working just fine, even in the desert). He would be unable to continue to do his job and any forced embed with a unit would be a distraction that could prove dangerous. Particularly, considering he could not keep his political opinions to himself and has now laid himself open as biased.
So, he could attempt to push himself back in through some hole in the rules or his expulsion, but I surmise it would an unhappy embed for him, stuck covering the motorpool. Maybe he could then cover the toll of war on our equipment?
The Marines were being pro-active. There's no guarantee that sort won't do something to *initiate* an incident, just to get a photo. Call me paranoid, but even paranoids can draw lessons from previous observation...
We may not be seeing some of their more gritty work (and there are pics they may just not take, true enough) but they're out there. That's where all the DoD imagery comes from.
Maggie,
I don't think the Marines took him where there would be dead and wounded Marines. I tried to go back to his blog to verify but it's down. I think he was there to take pictures of the meeting between the local sheiks and 2/3.
Suicide bomber dressed as a policman comes in with 20 lbs of c4 and detonates. He's there and starts snapping pictures.
As I've written over at Blackfive, there are only 3 possibilities as to who that Marine was. The families will know. Why do that to them? Why do that to the Marine? Why do that to the Marines of 2/3 who, in one heinous act, lost their senior leadership?
I thought maybe today I'd feel a little differently but that's not the case. This still makes me sick. I'm glad Gen. Kelly booted him out of al Anbar. Hope MNF upholds his decision.
Kat uses some very esoteric titles...
Very Esoteric
So until someone debunks his version, the Marines took him somewhere knowing there were dead and dying Marines.
Armorer - No I didn't notice. You know I am oblivious.
that being said...with the situation as it was..the Battalion commander, the Sgt, Major, F company commander and others in that meeting at the time of the blast, clearly, the patrol didn't have the time to take him back to the fob. So they weren't bringing a photojournalist with them to photograph the casualites, they were bringing him with them because they didn't have a choice.
If you are trying to say that the Marines told him it was okay to take pictures at the scene of the blast, I would strongly disagree. Even if he says that. I'm not sure he is and I refuse to go back to his blog to verify. You can if you want.
I'm not. I'm not *trying* to say anything. My point was given the information we have on hand right now. Someone in command needed to have thought this whole embed thing through more clearly. Based on what we know right now, this photojournalist did not disobey any rules as they were given to him. That tells me that the rules were not properly fleshed out. We are five years into Iraq. We should have figured this out before this incident.
If you go to Blackfive, the Wolf has a very interesting post up about the whole thing. We may never get the whole story on this but I'm not sure we're entitled to it either.
I'm glad he's away from the battalion. They don't need that right now. They have enough to deal with.
Everyone is jumping all over this guy and calling him a POS. He's not the problem and questioning his judgement and agenda doesn't solve the problem.
You've read the post that the Wold just put up? The one about setting up media embeds, etc.?
That only has two comments on it. One from me and one from one other commenter.
I don't think you're talking about the same post I am.
Second of all, he is the problem whether you like it or not. He took pictures as Marines were running around caring for the wounded and the dead Marines. He became at that moment, a dettriment to the morale of the unit. A unit that had just lost their ballation commander, F company commander and a Sgt. from H&S. That is why he had to be guarded until he could be taken out of the AO.
Their morale and their focus is crucial to accomplishing the mission. The photojournalist is not crucial to the mission. and if he ends up, as he did here, being a detriment than he's out.
And he is...out.
He will not be allowed to embed with Marines. Rightly so.
http://www.blackfive.net/main/2008/07/zoriah-the-pari.html
That may have something to do with the fact that the military doesn't want to propagandize to the American people concerning their mission, but in the end, I tend to think the military photographer and journalist position is not being exploited to its fullest potential.
My fingers are just not as fast as my brain and my brain isn't Secretariat to begin with...:)
Sorry.
Ymar - the stuff that DoD puts up is available for anyone to use - but if their photographers get gritty stuff, it rarely makes it to the DVIDS site.
Bloggers mine that stuff pretty regularly. The restrictions on use are pretty light.
The mainstreamers use 'em for small stories, but for big stories - they want "authentic" stuff.
I mean no disrespect. Photojournalists throughout time have always taken, and published, photos of unspeakable horrors. I am also aware of the story that goes with the napalm'd little girl, although many are not. That was just the first thing that popped into my head when I thought about "horrible pictures of the affects of war". Yon's famous picture of the soldier cradling the wounded child in the blanket is another one. The government has frowned upon letting the media show the battle scars, and deaths, for this war. Remember the ban on showing the flag drapped coffins? They're trying to prevent pictures like that of being used as enemy propoganda, and I understand that. But I have to wonder if shielding the American public of the true horrors of war is necessary or wise.
Again, all that being said.... if he broke the rules, he broke the rules, and should be banned. If, however, he DIDN'T break the rules, the rules need to be changed if that's the direction the US military wants to go. I also feel he showed very poor judgement in publishing a picture in which the deceased could be so easily identified. Tells me he was doing it for his own self-promotion without regard to the deceased's family. But we all know that showing poor judgement isn't necessarily against the rules- and it did get him the self-promotion he was looking for.