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Digital Cameras Change War Photo-Journalism
prakslash writes "Back in 1945, it took three days between the time U.S. Marines raised the flag on Iwo Jima and the famous picture of the historic moment was published in all the newspapers. In 2004, it took barely an hour before the explosive photos from an Iraqi prison were seen all over the world. This drives home a defining fact of 21st century - the pervasiveness of digital photography and the speed of the Internet are making it easier to see into dark corners previously out of reach of the mass media. As reported in
recent news, some of the most shocking Iraqi photos were not taken by photo-journalists but by soldiers and government contractors who used a digital camera, a CD burner and an internet connection to zip the photos around the world with an ease that has never existed before."
The first prison photos to be shown on CBS were taken last year .
"Some fight for law. Some fight for justice. What will you fight for? One day, you will see."
Uh... the interesting thing is that the pictures are from this past August. And 3 (or 5?) of the people invovled had already been referred to Article 32 (Court Martial) proceedings as of 10 days ago.
So yes, they only took an hour to go around the world. But it took 8 months for them to make it into the public's eye anyway.
From an article in the Sydney Morning Herald,
"For two weeks before 60 Minutes in America broke the torture story, it obeyed requests from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard Myers not to run it for fear it would harm American interests in Iraq. The network ran it only after learning that other journalists would tell the story if it didn't.
(see http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/05/08/10839114 61425.html)
In this case, it was relatively "instant" only once the news was ALLOWED to be let out of the bag.((U+C+I) x (10-S))/20 x A x 1/(1-sin(F/10))
This was just on the History Channel within the past two weeks. Yes, it's a picture of the second team that was sent to the top of the mountain. Their job was to get the original flag back for the officer that donated it for the first raising (the only flag they could find on short notice) and put a bigger flag in its place. Two photographers were assigned to the group, one to take photos and the other to make a movie of the event.
Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
If you did not yet hear about or read these sites :
:
Read how a Baghdad citizen felt about the preparations and during the war Salam Pax - Where is Raed ?.
Read about an Iraqi girl who lost her job and her hope for the future Riverbend - Baghdad Burning.
Read what an Iraqi female engineer tells about what's happening in Bagdad now A Family in Baghdad.
Read what an Iraqi architect has to say Raed in the Middle.
And in a slightly related note
The Stanford Prison Experiment documents an experiment that had to be aborted after only 6 days, because of abuses.
Indeed, very correct. Here's the pictures, for contrast:
The first picture. Note the tiny flag, and the pretty bad angle. Not a very cinimatic shot (though, personally, I think the soldier holding the gun in the bottom right gives a feel of danger to the picture, as he appears to be "on guard" and defending the position).
Here is the changing of the flags...
The second shot that everyone knows very well. Obviously, a very different feel to the picture.
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http://nemilar.net - Not your grandmother's soup kitchen
What report? According to the Red Cross, any communication on the treatment of prisoners is considered sensitive material, and is not made available to the public.
According to the USA Today, the Red Cross "repeatedly demanded that U.S. officials correct problems in Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison before recent revelations about the abuse of Iraqi inmates by American soldiers." (See article here)
What complaints?
I'm sure at least some of the prisoners complained.
What eye-witness accounts?
Oh, gee, I don't know, all the other prison guards that were standing by, knowing damn well this was going on, without doing a thing to stop it? And how far up the chain of command did this go, with no one doing anything to stop it?
What change? Remember, the soldiers pictured had already been held over for an Article 32 hearing (an official investigation, kinda-sorta similar to a grand jury in civilian criminal law, only not really) before 60 Minutes made with the shock and awe.
The public now knows about it, which will certainly encourage the military to clean up its act. That's what changed. Further, just because the military started acting on some of the violators does not mean that there weren't more violators out there. Now, with the public knowing and demanding that it stop, more strides will probably be taken to make sure that it does stop (a complete investigation, etc etc).
The pictures changed nothing but public opinion.
You make it sound as if public opinion is irrelevant. Remember, the United States has civilian control over the military. And guess who elects the civilians that have that control? Oh yeah, the public. And guess what 2004 is? An election year. So don't tell me that it was "just" public opinion that changed.
The public opinion shifted from the false position that every Iraqi prisoner was being treated equally and well to the equally false position that every Iraqi prisoner is being hideously tortured.
Bullshit. I don't think anybody thinks that. But do you disagree that even a single prisoner being mistreated is too many?
You've got front-page news of what is, in perspective, a very small event.
Do you understand what's at stake here? We invaded Iraq under the pretense of removing WMD. That has yet to pan out (maybe it will, maybe it won't), and after a while, the justification for the war switched to "at least Saddam is gone, at least the torture chambers have closed, and at least Iraqis will never have to live in fear anymore." Well guess what, the torture chambers are back open again. Do I think what the US has done is as bad as what Saddam did? Probably not, but I'm waiting to find out what these other images are that Rumsfeld talked about yesterday before I make my final decision.
The United States is supposed to be the leader of the free world, the country the rest of the world looks to for morality. And right now we're not being a very good role model. There is already plenty of anti-American sentiment around the world, and we certainly don't need any more fuel on the fire. I, for one, am currently ashamed to be an American, which is something I have NEVER felt before. So don't tell me this is not front page news.
Exactly right. The technology does exist to disseminate war information quickly but in fact Iraq has been one of the most poorly reported wars in a long time at least as far as the U.S. media coverage goes. You pretty much have to turn to the Arab networks to see any of the reality of what's been going on in Iraq. Those networks are, no doubt, slanted against the U.S. but the U.S. networks have been sanitized to the point they aren't giving any information at all about the real situation there. Pretty simply the American media has been completely cowed by the Pentagon through a variety of means.
In particular most journalists have been embedded which gives them unprecedented access to military units but at the price that the military has gained massive control of what the journalists do and don't report and when. Since they live with the soldiers they were also showing a severe propensity to see things the soldiers way and not objectively. I'm guessing journalists who aren't embedded are having a real problem moving around Iraq or covering the story. You see very little truly independent coverage by American journalists. Embedding journalists was a stroke of genius by the military propagandists.
Its also a simple fact of life most of the major media outlets have been incredibly reticent to cover controversial aspects of the war until recently for fear they will be branded unpatriotic, and that it will hurt their ratings which will hurt their advertising revenue. They know Fox will launch a broadside at them if they stray away from the party line that all is well in Iraq, and a host of politicians like Tom Delay will accuse them of treacherously undermining our troops in the field.
If you look at the coverage of Vietnam those journalists actually covered the real war in all its gore and ugliness. It caused Vietnam to become extremely unpopular, but mostly because people actually saw what was happening. The Pentagon has gone to great lengths to make Iraq appear to be clean, neat, tidy and heroic, though only by covering up most of the blood and the brutality which only came to light because a private with a conscience made a report they couldn't ignore and someone else with a conscience finally leaked the pictures at great personal risk, just like Daniel Elsberg did with the Pentagon papers during Vietnam. If that person hadn't stuck there neck out to expose this I doubt you would have ever seen the pictures because the were classified and DOD would have buried them, while they court martialed some little fish.
Its a simple fact that since 9/11 the Bush Administration decided to take the gloves off and have been condoning torture in myriad ways but with plausible deniability, by doing it at Guantanamo off shore, by sending prisoners to foreign governments like Syria and Saudi Arabia for torture, and by just looking the other way in Iraq and Afghanistan. The whole point of creating the term "enemy combatants" in place of POW's and in side stepping Geneva convention protections was precisely so that intelligence could be gathered by any means necessary. The soldiers in Iraq are probably being court martialed for being stupid enough to take pictures that destroyed plausible deniability more than for the actual torturing.
Its important to note Cheney and Rumsfeld are experts at hiding brutality by the American military. They are the leading suspects for having buried the investigation of the 101st Airborne's Tiger force that went on a civilian killing spree in central Vietnam. That investigation died in the Nixon administration during Rumsfeld's first stint as Secretary of Defense and while Cheney was Nixon's chief of staff.
Fact is since 9/11 the Bush administration felt they were facing a ruthless enemy and if they wanted to win they had to be equally ruthless. Unfortunately in Iraq, with the surfacing of these pictures, its undermined the only remaining rationale for the war in Iraq, that the U.S. was liberating the Iraqi's from Saddam's brutality when in fact the U.S. is being pretty brutal itself. Its hard for the Bush administration to rant against "Saddam's rape rooms" when proof has surfaced that the rape rooms are still in use today.
@de_machina