A decision put into place 18 years ago has recently come back onto the fore front of conversation as President Obama makes another change in his first one hundred days.
Along with massive bailouts, giving the war in Iraq a new direction, and changing the rules for which foreign countries we give aide to, the Obama administration has lifted the ban on taking pictures of our fallen soldiers' caskets returning home. This decision has been met with much debate; and though there are two sides to every story, this decision seems long over due.
On February 26, 2009, Defense Secretary Robert Gates lifted the near 20-year ban put in place by Dick Cheney during George Bush Sr.'s Presidency. The ban took away the right to take pictures of the flag-draped caskets returning home from war.
Before the various issues involving this subject are even discussed, it is important to know the history of this ban. This ban was not put into place to protect privacy. It was not put into place because family members of fallen soliers had asked for it. The ban was put into place by George Bush Sr. after he was seen on a news station's split-screen laughing about something as caskets of our dead soldiers were being unloaded at an air force base on the second screen.
This moment made Bush Sr. seem insensitive and out of touch with the reality of war, so in an attempt to manage his public relations, a ban was placed on photographing the caskets of soldiers.
It is incredible that such a bold move to manipulate reality and the news was successful for so long. The issue was turned away from an issue of censorship and was made into a matter of "privacy". The arguements we hear now about the family's right to privacy and stopping left-wing anti-war propaganda were never really an arguement until the pictures made Bush Sr. look bad.
Though they weren't the real reasons this ban was put into place, it would be good to address some of these excuses for censorship now. Privacy versus the public's right to know is a main factor in the present-day debate over war time pictures and what the media can and should publish.
Privacy is important to everyone. It is important to protect the soldiers' family's privacy as well as the privacy of our soldiers. However, pictures taken of caskets are just that... caskets. This ban does not give reporters the right to follow the families home, go to the soldier's funerals, open up the caskets and snap a shot, etc.
Our nation's war-time coverage is PG-rated, to put it nicely. We are not exposed to the carnage of war, the vivid images of death, homelessness, and starvation war often causes. We do not witness the injured women and children, the demolished homes and schools, or the missing limbs of the elderly.
We don't witness these horrific images because CNN, FOX, and NBC don't feel like they pass the "breakfast test", where you could see the images while eating your morning meal without regurgitating your cereal all over your kitchen table.
We are censored from seeing these images and are given a rediculous arguement to chew over instead, on whether or not photographing a casket is appropriate or not. Maybe if we get all worked up over casket photos we will forget about the real issue of censorship, death, and needless wars... at least that's what the government is hoping for.
Naturally it worries the government that if the American people see the number of American soldiers dying, they will lose support for war. This idea brings me back to my childhood. One of the many lessons my parents tried to teach me was that if you're doing something you think you need to sugar-coat, lie about, or cover-up, you probably shouldn't be doing it.
This idea seems to be fitting in a lot of different areas, including the government and media censorship. If the government feels the need to hide pictures from the people in order to keep public opinion up, then something is probably wrong with what the governement is trying to do.
Aside from government accountability, the way the media handles its reporting of war doesn't fit with reporting standards for other news. The media is constantly reporting an unproportional amount of violence in the news. Murder, robberies, and kidnappings are eaten up my the big news stations. The more dramatic a story is the better, even if it is not a real representation of current crime trends.
The news will talk for days about the mutilation a chimp causes to its neighbor, but start to get into coverage of a war where more than 4,000 troops have died, and the media is suddenly put under a silencer.
Sure the news outlets will give a nice watered-down update of the war's status, casualties, and new changes, but until we are able to see the images war produces, the caskets of our soldiers being brought home, we will not grasp the reality that people are dying. Our brothers, husbands, and fathers are dying.
A child has to be accountable to his parents, a husband to his wife, and a government to its people. And our country cannot live in a false reality where we don't see the true cost of our actions. By lifting this ban, President Obama is finally bringing back a measure of accountability and reality that is owed to the American people.
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