This is one of two op-eds I wrote about the particulars of covering war. I sent it off to a few places, but who knows what will come of it.
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Now that the Israel-Hezbollah conflict has come to an end, people are trying to correct their hindsight to 20/20. As an American journalist in the Middle East, I wonder how the media helped people interpret the conflict. The Arab daily newspaper where I work featured at least one photograph of a dead body everyday during the conflict. Having worked as a reporter in war zones and seen first hand the remains of people who died violent deaths, I question the ability of graphic photos to help people understand a conflict.
Editors who run these types of photos generally do so with a bit of morose pride. Having the "courage" to print these photos means that, as a news outlet, you're not afraid to show people the consequences of war. This is true. War kills people in horrible ways. Yet this strikes me as an incomplete message that's easily misunderstood.
When I was an embedded reporter with the US military in Iraq, I once saw three Iraqis with their hands bound behind their backs. Someone had shot each of them in the face at point blank range with an automatic assault rifle. The executioners then dumped the bodies on the side of the road.
The platoon medic had to search the bodies for IDs, which we all hoped might make sense of the killings. The twenty-year-old medic approached the bodies that most of the soldiers agreed were the most gruesome they'd seen yet. One man's lips had moved to where his ear should have been. Not sure what to do but wanting to help, another soldier picked up pieces of the men's skull that lay scattered around the bodies and dropped them in an evidence bag.
Rigor mortis had set in, so when the medic rolled over the first body to check the dead man's pockets, it was like rolling over a manikin. The burst of automatic rifle fire had made the man's face almost gelatinous. It had oozed out on the ground and apparently congealed when rigor mortis set in, so it looked like a cartoon character after getting hit in the face with a frying pan. It was so horrible that it was almost funny. The whole time the medic searched the bodies he had a reserved grin on his face like he was trying to keep from laughing in church.
I suppose any part of that scene would have made a great photograph for an editor who wanted to show readers the "horrors of war." But what if we saw a photo of the smirking medic handling a deformed body in a newspaper? What would we think about him?
Could an outsider understand everything that picture had to say?
Looking at pictures of dead people gives outsiders an artificial moral authority. They look at the picture from the comfort of their homes, or maybe casually on the commuter train. No matter how good a picture or how sensitive the viewer, it's still a relatively impersonal experience. Yet for most people the images are disturbing and hard to look at, which makes the viewer feel connected, like he's sacrificed a piece of his mental health to understand the conflict. He then feels that this "sacrifice" somehow entitles him to make a definitive judgment about the situation, forgetting that his credibility comes from looking at a graphic picture over breakfast or en route to work.
The photo hasn't taught the viewer anything that will help him better understand the conflict. More than anything, he probably feels confused and a little disturbed, but not enough to stop him from taking another sip of coffee and skipping directly to the arts and leisure section.
After repeated use, photos of the dead become almost like impersonal statistics. Most papers use them to humanize an article about a body count, but in an odd way these photos just become a dry extension of a sad statistic. When I saw the photo of a faceless body—quite similar to the three men I saw in Iraq—being pulled from the ruins of a bombed out building in Lebanon, I thought, "Another Lebanon story." I wasn't in the mood, so I found another article that interested me.
Newspapers are designed to give serious and casual readers a general understanding of world events. In any war, it's important to understand the human cost, but pictures of dead people may not always be the most effective means of doing so.
A photo of a dead person cannot begin to explain the depth of emotions that surround the violent ending of a human life. It's an opaque window into a world that doesn't make much sense.
______
Now that the Israel-Hezbollah conflict has come to an end, people are trying to correct their hindsight to 20/20. As an American journalist in the Middle East, I wonder how the media helped people interpret the conflict. The Arab daily newspaper where I work featured at least one photograph of a dead body everyday during the conflict. Having worked as a reporter in war zones and seen first hand the remains of people who died violent deaths, I question the ability of graphic photos to help people understand a conflict.
Editors who run these types of photos generally do so with a bit of morose pride. Having the "courage" to print these photos means that, as a news outlet, you're not afraid to show people the consequences of war. This is true. War kills people in horrible ways. Yet this strikes me as an incomplete message that's easily misunderstood.
When I was an embedded reporter with the US military in Iraq, I once saw three Iraqis with their hands bound behind their backs. Someone had shot each of them in the face at point blank range with an automatic assault rifle. The executioners then dumped the bodies on the side of the road.
The platoon medic had to search the bodies for IDs, which we all hoped might make sense of the killings. The twenty-year-old medic approached the bodies that most of the soldiers agreed were the most gruesome they'd seen yet. One man's lips had moved to where his ear should have been. Not sure what to do but wanting to help, another soldier picked up pieces of the men's skull that lay scattered around the bodies and dropped them in an evidence bag.
Rigor mortis had set in, so when the medic rolled over the first body to check the dead man's pockets, it was like rolling over a manikin. The burst of automatic rifle fire had made the man's face almost gelatinous. It had oozed out on the ground and apparently congealed when rigor mortis set in, so it looked like a cartoon character after getting hit in the face with a frying pan. It was so horrible that it was almost funny. The whole time the medic searched the bodies he had a reserved grin on his face like he was trying to keep from laughing in church.
I suppose any part of that scene would have made a great photograph for an editor who wanted to show readers the "horrors of war." But what if we saw a photo of the smirking medic handling a deformed body in a newspaper? What would we think about him?
Could an outsider understand everything that picture had to say?
Looking at pictures of dead people gives outsiders an artificial moral authority. They look at the picture from the comfort of their homes, or maybe casually on the commuter train. No matter how good a picture or how sensitive the viewer, it's still a relatively impersonal experience. Yet for most people the images are disturbing and hard to look at, which makes the viewer feel connected, like he's sacrificed a piece of his mental health to understand the conflict. He then feels that this "sacrifice" somehow entitles him to make a definitive judgment about the situation, forgetting that his credibility comes from looking at a graphic picture over breakfast or en route to work.
The photo hasn't taught the viewer anything that will help him better understand the conflict. More than anything, he probably feels confused and a little disturbed, but not enough to stop him from taking another sip of coffee and skipping directly to the arts and leisure section.
After repeated use, photos of the dead become almost like impersonal statistics. Most papers use them to humanize an article about a body count, but in an odd way these photos just become a dry extension of a sad statistic. When I saw the photo of a faceless body—quite similar to the three men I saw in Iraq—being pulled from the ruins of a bombed out building in Lebanon, I thought, "Another Lebanon story." I wasn't in the mood, so I found another article that interested me.
Newspapers are designed to give serious and casual readers a general understanding of world events. In any war, it's important to understand the human cost, but pictures of dead people may not always be the most effective means of doing so.
A photo of a dead person cannot begin to explain the depth of emotions that surround the violent ending of a human life. It's an opaque window into a world that doesn't make much sense.
posted by Tom | 2:37 AM
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