Overload! And Thank You, Seattle Times Reporters & Executive Editor, for Doing Your Jobs!


Working hard this week on my online course, where I am in training to teach online with the University of Maryland University College. Overwhelmed after dashing off to Buffalo on short notice 4/20 to photograph the protest against President Bush & the so-called P.A.T.R.I.O.T. act (as well as add my 2 cents) & get them up for the world to see right away. Madly trying to get work done. Many things to say & little time to say it in. In particular I want to call attention to two stories and an editorial in The Seattle Times about a photograph it published showing the flag-draped coffins of some of our dead soldiers returning from Iraq.

So much I have to say, and so little time to say it in. I am overwhelmed with work. But in many ways happily so. It's just that it gets to the point where I become completely useless. My brain is fried. Had some tech glitches with this weblog, or I would have posted a bit earlier.

There are a lot of things I have read recently that I want to call people's attention to. For now, there's this: a pair of stories in the Seattle Times about a woman who was fired from her job because she allowed the newspaper to publish a photograph of hers that showed the flag-drapped coffins of our dead servicemen/women returning from Iraq, and an editorial from the Seattle Times executive editor explaining the decision to publish.

Here are the stories:

1.) Woman loses her job over coffins photo

By Hal Bernton
Seattle Times staff reporter

A military contractor has fired Tami Silicio, a Kuwait-based cargo worker whose photograph of flag-draped coffins of fallen U.S. soldiers was published in Sunday's edition of The Seattle Times.

More here.

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2.) Images of war dead a sensitive subject

By Ray Rivera
Seattle Times staff reporter

The image was of row upon row of flag-draped coffins being loaded onto an Air Force cargo plane in Kuwait. They were American war dead, killed in a bloody month of fighting in Iraq. David Perlmutter, a professor at Louisiana State University, showed it to his class and asked: Would you have published it, as The Seattle Times did on Sunday?

Of the hundred or so in the class, most said no. But when asked to explain, Perlmutter said, they said that while "they didn't want to see the pictures, they said it's probably good we know that it's happening."

Americans have long struggled with the morality of showing images of war dead, especially fellow Americans.

More here.

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3) Seattle Times executive editor Mike Fancher responds to the controversy:

Powerful photograph offered chance to tell an important story

The caller said she had a picture a friend had sent to her. "Somebody should see it," she said.

Barry Fitzsimmons, a veteran photojournalist, has handled many of those calls and knows most of the pictures are never published. The Seattle Times photo editor also knows, "one in a thousand is a gem," so he agreed to give this one a look.

When the photo arrived, "I just said wow," Fitzsimmons recalls. "The picture was something we don't have access to as the media," and yet it seemed undeniably newsworthy.

What the caller had was the picture on today's front page. It shows rows of flag-draped military coffins inside an airplane in Kuwait. These were America's war dead on their way home at a moment when U.S. troops are experiencing their deadliest month of the war.

More here.

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It is clear to me that the real purpose behind the ban on the coffins is to keep Americans from thinking too hard on what is actually happening to our young men and women in the Armed Forces in Iraq. I am sorry to hear that Silicio was fired, but glad to hear that the Seattle Times is doing what newspapers are supposed to do, and that is cover the news. These days too many U.S. journalists seem to be asleep at the helm!

Thank heaven for the internet, because that means these stories are accessible around the world.

Posted: Thu - April 22, 2004 at 09:24 AM          

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