Yesterday, Salon.com published a gallery of newly acquired photos
of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, showing abuse of Iraqi prisoners by
American troops. The website received a DVD containing more than 1,000
photographs, videos, and supporting documents from the Army’s probe
into the scandal. Editors said the source was “someone who spent time
at Abu Ghraib as a uniformed member of the military and is familiar
with the CID (Criminal Investigation Command) investigation.” These
were photos that have not been published before.
While Salon only published a small fraction of the photos that were on
the DVD, what I found remarkable was the editors’ decision to show the
images unedited. There are photos of naked prisoners with their
genitals visible; there’s a close-up of the beaten face of a dead
prisoner; a photo of a naked prisoner apparently being forced to
sodomize himself with an object; a couple images of blood (lots of it)
on the floor of a cell, with one showing that a badly bleeding prisoner
had been dragged along the floor.
These are shocking images, to be sure. This is the kind of stuff that
media in some countries might publish without worrying about offending
viewers. They show the harsh reality of the scandal. But in the U.S., I
simply can’t imagine any mainstream newspaper, magazine, or news
website of a mainstream news organization publishing them unedited.
Editors would find it unthinkable to show a naked and bound prisoner
without his genitals blacked out or blurred.
Salon did (correctly) choose not to show photos where prisoners’ faces
were identifiable, so they show the abuse without violating the privacy
of the prisoners, at least.
Did Salon make a bad decision? Personally, I don’t think so. Such
pictures on a website aren’t in your face the way they’d be in a print
edition where you turn the page and find yourself in shock. Website
users decide for themselves whether to click on the link; they’ve been
warned that graphic images are ahead.
I think there are some cultural differences at play. American news
consumers seem to be less tolerant of seeing “unpleasantness” than
people in some other countries. Salon can be applauded (or condemned,
depending on your point of view) for pushing the boundaries of news
images that Americans see in their media.
While I doubt that we’ll see major American news organizations
presenting the photos unedited as Salon does, I did note a bit of
loosening up: USAToday.com included a direct link to the Salon photo
gallery in this story published Thursday (with a warning).
In any event, Salon and Internet news in general is pushing the
boundaries of what is shown to the news-consuming public. A wider
selection of news sources in the Internet era means that graphic images of
atrocities will see the light of day, whether we like it or not.
