May 24, 2004

EDITORIAL

Scripps Howard News Service

First the shock of the Abu Ghraib prison photos, then the aftershock: a surprising debate over whether they should have been published at all. Jonah Goldberg of National Review Online argued that details of the prisoner abuse were about to pour out anyway. He said the inflammatory pictures were unnecessary. In response, Aaron Brown of CNN said: "You don't appreciate what happened in that prison until you see it." So Goldberg wrote a second column: If snapshots and images tell the story better than words, why don't the networks show us a "partial-birth" abortion? Surely such pictures would add to our understanding.

Good point. Although the first wave of photos should have been published, there's the "enough, already" school of thought -- no more Abu Ghraib pictures, please. But if, as Brown argued, graphic detail is essential to understanding stories, why did the media agonize over (and largely suppress) close-up photos of the dismembered bodies of the four American civilians murdered and torched at Fallujah? The tape of Nick Berg being beheaded is in the public domain. Why doesn't Aaron Brown demand that CNN show it so that we can better understand terrorism? And why did the networks and the print media withhold the grisly 9/11 pictures of bodies hitting the ground at the World Trade Center?

Many factors are at work here, including queasiness about pouring violent images into family newspapers and broadcasts. But surely one factor is a semiconscious double standard: The media are more likely to show what is done by Americans than what is done to Americans. Group attitudes about American power and values tend to affect news judgment. No surprise there.

Some 40 organizations, plus many authors, are protesting the Patriot Act and the alleged totalitarian John Ashcroft, while ignoring the library issue in the real-life totalitarian state to our south. Is it too much to expect some consistent principled behavior from the librarians, the press and the politicians?

Apparently so.