By Donald R. Winslow
© 2009 News Photographer magazine
WASHINGTON, DC (October 16, 2009) – The revising of the latest revision of the newly-modified ground rules governing whether embedded journalists may or may not photograph U.S. military personnel killed in action in Afghanistan may or may not now be finalized.
Wait, what?
That's right, apparently it's not over with yet – there may be more revisions coming, according to a Pentagon spokesperson late today.
While news outlets this week first reported that new ground rules in Afghanistan's Regional Command East had put an outright ban on embedded journalists photographing U.S. troops killed in action, and then a day later reported that RC East had backed away from the ban with a modified agreement that was not as restrictive, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman today told the Associated Press that the latest modification for embeds still "does not give news organizations enough freedom."
"Only about half my concerns were resolved," Whitman told AP.
This all started within the last two weeks when journalists arriving at Bagram Air Field in Afghanistan discovered language in a Regional Command East new embedding agreement in eastern Afghanistan that said: "Media will not be allowed to photograph or record video of U.S. personnel killed in action."
When news organizations and press freedom groups protested the ban, the Pentagon (we now know) suggested a re-write. While the revision to the revised ground rules were re-issued by Regional Command East, and their press release made it sound like the lifting of the ban was their idea, today's comments by Whitman make it clear the "suggestion" to re-do the embed agreement that banned photographing KIAs instead came from Washington.
The new embed agreement released Thursday does allow photography of casualties but says that participating news organizations cannot use material where there is a recognizable face or other identifiable feature, and journalists cannot write about or photograph wounded troops unless those service members give prior permission.
But that agreement may not be the last development, according to Whitman. Today he said that while the Pentagon has stopped short of ordering another re-write, and while the field commanders' total ban on KIA images was too restrictive, the latest embed agreement issued yesterday is one that still falls short of the Pentagon's goals.
Whitman says he's asked for yet another revision, but that none came "by the close of business Friday in Afghanistan," he told AP.
Meanwhile a different Pentagon spokesperson, Dave Lapan, told AP that field commanders were "still reviewing it."
Confusing as it may sound, yet another military official, U.S. Army Col. Wayne M. Shanks this afternoon sent The New York Times a link to the official Media Ground Rules and told the Times, "You will find we have one set of ground rules for all of Afghanistan." Shanks is the chief of public affairs for the international forces in Afghanistan.
"You will see our intent is not to release the identity of casualties prior to the next of kin notification process and protect the privacy rights of our wounded," Shanks told the Times.
The major concern about embedding agreements, Whitman said, is preserving operational security and the military's system for giving relatives notice of casualties. "Any time that you're talking about casualties, the reporting of casualties and imagery of casualties, it's an emotional issue," he told AP.
Journalists have observed that it's unusual for Pentagon and military policy to get "hashed out" in real time in public like this. Normally a doctrine dealing with something as serious as whether or not the death of a U.S. soldier in war on foreign soil is or is not going to be seen by the voters and policy-makers back at home would be worked out behind closed doors. But the August death of U.S. Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Joshua M. Bernard, 21, seems to have changed that.
The initial change in the embed rules banning photographing KIAS came only a few weeks after a Pentagon uproar – raised chiefly by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates – after the Associated Press distributed a picture of Bernard when he was mortally wounded by a rocket-propelled grenade that was fired against him by insurgents during a battle in Afghanistan's Helmand province.
Photographer Julie Jacobson and AP followed the embed rules they were working under when she captured the now-famous image of Bernard, fatally wounded, being tended to my two fellow Marines on August 14, 2009. The picture was part of a package of stories and photographs AP distributed on September 4, 2009, three weeks after Bernard's death. The Marine did not die in front of Jacobson's lens on the battlefield. He was alive as she watched him being transported from the battlefield back to the Marine's forward operating base, and when the patrol and Jacobson returned to camp they saw a Blackhawk helicopter just departing with Bernard as he was flown to an advanced medical facility. Only later did the Marines and Jacobson learn that Bernard died that evening in surgery when a blot clot lodged in his heart.
Three weeks later the AP package, "Death Of A Marine," was embargoed for 24 another hours after it was distributed so that editors had time to discuss it and to consider what they might pick to publish from the collection. The embargo time would give editors a chance to weigh the impact of Jacobson's picture of the mortally-wounded Marine. But before it was distributed over their network, AP representatives paid a courtesy visit to Bernard's family in South Portland, ME, to show them the package in advance. While it's possible the Marine's parents misunderstood the intent of AP's visit, the meeting was an act of courtesy so Bernard's parents could see the AP series before it was released to the world; it was not an attempt to seek the family's permission.
When AP released the picture of the dying Marine, Defense Secretary Gates slammed AP president and CEO Thomas Curley and called AP's decision to show it "appalling" and a breach of "common decency." The AP responded to Gates by saying the picture "conveys the grimness of war and the sacrifice of young men and women fighting it."
TOUGH PICTURES. The former head of AP photos, retired picture editor Hal Buell, wrote about Jacobson's photograph and other "difficult" images from war and terrorism in the October issue of News Photographer magazine ("Tough Pictures," page 36). In his essay, Buell explains how sometimes the pictures themselves from World War II, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, and the public's reaction, makes news.
"The picture of Cpl. Bernard on the ground was used by only a few newspapers but its appearance started a dustup on the Internet of a proportion not seen in some time," Buell wrote in News Photographer.
"It is not uncommon for pictures of this kind to draw vigorous reader reaction. While there is a pattern to these reactions, each picture has its own peculiar twist. It is my personal observation that in the long history of such pictures, Jacobson's photograph is neither more nor less graphic than many others of this kind. Recall the horrific pictures of so many photographs from Vietnam of the wounded and the dead, the body bags lined up alongside helicopters, medics patching up the wounded, the bloody and bandaged helping others who were bloody and bandaged."
Vietnam was the most photographed war in history, Buell says, not only because of the duration of the conflict but also because of the incredible access photographers had to the battle, the lack of censorship, and because there was a much greater loss of life and injury in that war than in today's campaign.
"Compared to Vietnam, pictures of the dead and wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan have been rare," he said.
A New York Times story by Michael Kamber and Tim Arango in 2008 revealed just how rare these pictures have been.
"After five years and more than 4,000 American combat deaths, searches and interviews turned up fewer than half-dozen graphic photographs of dead American soldiers," they wrote.
Reader earlier coverage of the ban on photographing KIAs and the initial modification of the agreement.
