The New York Times is whining today that they aren't being allowed to show more photos of dead American soldiers. A piece titled 4,000 U.S. Combat Deaths, and Just a Handful of Images complains mightily that photographers just aren't getting the go ahead to show enough dead Americans to change policy.
Protein Wisdom dissects the Times's claim of persecution, discovering that--gasp!--those "all the news that fits" guys aren't entirely truthful.
In sum, what the magical “some” claim is a “growing effort by the American military to control graphic images from the war” turns out to be a handful of cases over the course of several years. The New York Times starts with the claim that even following the rules can result in expulsion from covering the war with the military, when only the Miller case comes close. The remainder involve disembedding at most — and those cases look fishy when checked against other press accounts. What remains is the US military’s tightening of the embed rules in 2007, which was the fault of the New York Times.
Newsbusters gives us at least one additional reason why photos showing up online minutes after an attack isn't a good thing: it helps our enemies assess their success. But don't let facts interfere with a good hissy fit.
As I pointed out here, anti-American war protestors aren't really interested in the dead; they are interested in persuading people that America is evil (pick a post at Echidne or Pandagon if you don't believe me). They don't care about Iraqi dead, provided those people die from something other than American bullets.
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