Quote Originally Posted by carl View Post
Their decision to publish the photo was completely within their rights, and wholly reprehensible and deserving of the strongest condemnation. They knowingly hurt people when they didn't have to and had been asked not to.
They should be shamed, though I think their moral certitude makes them invulnerable to that.

As far as an Afghan or Iraqi soldier, we should exhibit the same decency, maybe we don't but we should. The big thing is the man was dying and a family request. Wounded and recovered, is one thing. Obscured or long shots of the dead are another, like in the Lima helo photos from VN.

This case was unique and they did the wrong thing for the wrong reasons; one of which was a smug arrogance that us flyover people needed to be educated to the realities of war. There are tens and twenties of millions of us who are well acquainted with life and death through life's experience. We know what life is and we know how easy it is to lose it. We don't need to be taught by those who consider themselves our betters, especially at the price of hurting people who shouldn't have been.

Freedom of the press and decency are two different things and one doesn't insure the other, whatever we may wish.
Double-ditto-complete-agreement. There is a BIG difference between what the law allows me to do and what I ought to do. I will go beyond this post to say that I have never seen right and wrong as being things defined by law of man. Right and wrong and legal/illegal often overlap, but they are not necessarily the same. Publishing the photo was legal, but disgusting. Had the family not asked them not to do so, I would have a different opinion.