Pentagon Rethinks Photo Ban on Coffins Bearing War Dead
WashPost 16feb09
"President Obama said last week that he is considering lifting the ban on photographs and videos at Dover, in place since the Persian Gulf War in 1991, raising fundamental questions about the impact of such images on the public morale in wartime.
For Obama, changing the policy would carry some political risk as he ramps up the war effort in Afghanistan with tens of thousands of fresh troops, increasing the likelihood of combat deaths that could produce photographs of numerous coffins arriving at one time at Dover, the sole U.S. port of entry for the remains. At the same time, Obama has advocated transparency in government, and continuing to hide the Dover ritual from public view conflicts with that principle as well as with public opinion on the issue, polls indicate.
"Showing these pictures would remind people of the war," said S. Robert Lichter, director of the Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University. But he added that "what turns people against a war is not knowledge that Americans are dying but the belief that they are not dying for something" worthwhile.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/16/AR2009021601480.html?hpid=artslot[/URL]
I find this topic fascinating. Lots of issues involved. Thoughts?
With new media such as bloggers, how do you allow access to some media but not others?
Having been around when the coffins came
Quote:
Originally Posted by
OmarLittle
...I think it could do some good...Maybe the Dover photos and subsequent obits would help those disconnected Americans feel connected to the story. Maybe it would help with the moderate's perspective.
back from Korea and Viet Nam -- and photos were published, I'm pretty sure the answer to your pondering is 'No. It will make virtually no difference to most Americans.'
It is, as several have pointed out, purely a political issue. The good news is that the American Legion and the VFW have come out solidly against it; that is good only from the standpoint that our new Administration seems to react over strongly to perceived objections to their desired course and that tendency to overreach will adversely impact their net ability over the next four years to affect DoD and the Armed Forces...
That's not an accurate picture.
Arlington is Arlington and the guy that runs it IIRC and if he has not moved on, is the second generation of his family in that job. That's odd in itself. Can't say about him but I know his like named predecessor in the 1970s had some quite different and strict ideas about what was proper and what was not...
The important thing is that far more burials take place in cemeteries all over the country than in Arlington by many orders of magnitude (purposeful redundance) and there have been no restrictions on media coverage. I've seen photos and stories from all over the country for eight years with tons of photos and the internet is full of them. I just Googled "Funeral Iraq soldier"and got 180,000 hits; went to the image pages and got 50 pages of images, about 50% or so of which were pictures of funerals.
Showing photos of coffins at Dover is NOT a PR issue, it is a political issue.