Community | September 04, 2009 | 130 comments

Gates says AP decision to print photo of dying marine 'appalling'

source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20090904/pl_politico/26759

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JanforGore
Defense Secretary Robert Gates is objecting “in the strongest terms” to an Associated Press decision to transmit a photograph showing a mortally wounded 21-year-old Marine in his final moments of life, calling the decision “appalling” and a breach of “common decency.”

The AP reported that the Marine’s father had asked – in an interview and in a follow-up phone call — that the image, taken by an embedded photographer, not be published.

The AP reported in a story that it decided to make the image public anyway because it “conveys the grimness of war and the sacrifice of young men and women fighting it.”

The photo shows Lance Cpl. Joshua M. Bernard of New Portland, Maine, who was struck by a rocket-propelled grenade in a Taliban ambush Aug. 14 in Helmand province of southern Afghanistan, according to The AP.

Gates wrote to Thomas Curley, AP’s president and chief executive officer. “Out of respect for his family’s wishes, I ask you in the strongest of terms to reconsider your decision. I do not make this request lightly. In one of my first public statements as Secretary of Defense, I stated that the media should not be treated as the enemy, and made it a point to thank journalists for revealing problems that need to be fixed – as was the case with Walter Reed."

“I cannot imagine the pain and suffering Lance Corporal Bernard’s death has caused his family. Why your organization would purposefully defy the family’s wishes knowing full well that it will lead to yet more anguish is beyond me. Your lack of compassion and common sense in choosing to put this image of their maimed and stricken child on the front page of multiple American newspapers is appalling. The issue here is not law, policy or constitutional right – but judgment and common decency.”

The four-paragraph letter concluded, “Sincerely,” then had Gates’ signature.

The photo, first transmitted Thursday morning and repeated Friday morning, carries the warning, “EDS NOTE: GRAPHIC CONTENT.”

The caption says: “In this photo taken Friday, Aug. 14, 2009, Lance Cpl. Joshua Bernard is tended to by fellow U.S. Marines after being hit by a rocket propelled grenade during a firefight against the Taliban in the village of Dahaneh in the Helmand Province of Afghanistan. Bernard was transported by helicopter to Camp Leatherneck where he later died of his wounds.”

Gates’ letter was sent Thursday, after he talked to Curley by phone at about 3:30 p.m. Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell said Gates told Curley: “I am asking you to reconsider your decision to publish this graphic photograph of Lance Corporal Bernard. I am begging you to defer to the wishes of the family. This will cause them great pain.”

Curley was “very polite and willing to listen,” and send he would reconvene his editorial team and reconsider, Morrell said. Within the hour, Curley called Morrell and said the editors had reconvened but had ultimately come to the same conclusion.

Gates “was greatly disappointed they had not done the right thing,” Morrell said.

The Buffalo News ran the photo on page 4, and the The (Wheeling, W.Va.) Intelligencer ran an editorial defending its decision to run the photo. Some newspapers – including the Arizona Republic, The Washington Times and the Orlando Sentinel – ran other photos from the series. Several newspaper websites – including the Akron Beacon-Journal and the St. Petersburg Times – used the photo online.

Morrell said Gates wanted the information about his conversations released “so everyone would know how strongly he felt about the issue.”

The Associated Press reported in a story about deliberations about that photo that “after a period of reflection,” the news service decided “to make public an image that conveys the grimness of war and the sacrifice of young men and women fighting it.

end of excerpt
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So what do you think? Did AP go over the line?
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130 comments // Gates says AP decision to print photo of dying marine 'appalling'

  • pakazak
    • 0
      pakazak  

    • and i think we all need to just stop right here and not make this another shouting match.
      we haven't figured out by now that we all are NOT liberals and conservatives. i refuse to live in your black and white world of all right or all wrong.

    • 2 years ago
  • JanforGore
    • 0
      JanforGore  

    • And another assumption. I am against this war, but his parents asked not to have that photo printed and they did it anyway. If it were my son, I wouldn't want it printed either. This goes beyond politics to me. Amazing some are so adamant about showing these photos but are not daring to stand up to Obama regarding ending this war.

    • 2 years ago
  • curtisreed
    • 0
      curtisreed  

    • hombre76 expresses beautifully the anti-American goal: to create another defeat for America. Nevermind that Afghanistan is THE war we should have been trying to fight and win all the time, as it was from there that our enemies attacked and killed 3000+ Americans.

      No, the point is, as he says: "how soon we forget the power that frontline journalism brought to exposing the corruptness of the Vietnam war and ultimately ending that horrible campaign."

      See, the AP has its political agenda: to create another military loss.

      It has NOTHING to do with educating people about the "brutality of war". What, do they think we're so stupid we have to see a photo of a dying soldier to know that war is brutal?

      Of course not. The intention is propaganda. As hombre points out, Liberal socialists think that ALL wars are "unjust wars in your name to be fought". I guess the Che loving hipocrites of the world would have us lick the boots of Taliban and al Qa'eda terrorists, while they sport T-shirts of mass murderers like Che and Fidel.

      They appear to be in league with the Move On communists and want to pressure Obama to turn tail and run.

      That, by the way, would be DISASTER for the Liberals. It would be just one more reminder to the American patriots why our national security can NEVER be trusted to socialists who would rather see us destroyed.

    • 2 years ago
  • hombre76
    • 0
      hombre76  

    • Wow how soon we forget the power that frontline journalism brought to exposing the corruptness of the Vietnam war and ultimately ending that horrible campaign. The rest of you may wish to bury your heads in the sand but I applaud those news agencies that bring us constantly the images and details of the true cost of our misadventures in occupying other countries. It is precisely because of people like you that we must plaster these images over every medium so that eventually you will have to confront these atrocities and bring them to an end. In other words to hell with your sensibilities about whats proper and whats not until we all stop engaging in these inhuman wars all together then your or Gate's opinion on what is proper decorum is about as important as a bag off collected farts. Though I am equally sure you will stop posting these opinions about as quickly as you'll stop allowing unjust wars in your name to be fought.

    • 2 years ago
  • samthesixth
  • pakazak
  • unclecharlie
  • samhebert1
    • 0
      samhebert1  
    • hombre76:

      Uncle Charlie
      - Your right that communism kills. It can be very dangerous; But so can capitalism:

      Just read the book, "The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair.
      It should show how there are many horror inside the capitalist system unchecked.

    • 2 years ago
  • jubal
  • jubal
  • hombre76
    • 0
      hombre76  
    • hombre76:

      hay acontradiction you may not think i deserve freedom but I have it none the less hows about you come and try to take it from me and see what happens? I promise i won't call the police or anything it'll be just the two of us and some gardening shears k?

    • 2 years ago
  • J_Jammer
    • 0
      J_Jammer [removed]  
    • hombre76:

      The moment you post a bloody picture of your dead loved one online to stop violence of whatever they died from....is the moment you have the actions to back your words.

      Otherwise they are just weak words.

    • 2 years ago
  • hombre76
  • J_Jammer
    • 0
      J_Jammer [removed]  
    • hombre76:

      I stand behind my words no matter.

      I don't think you can do the same if it was someone you loved (the one you are the closest to on this planet) whose body was all sprawled out bleeding and looking shred up and the AP snapped a photo and said LOOK AT HOW BAD THIS WAR IS....totally ignoring who the person or your feelings on the matter.

      You'd be pissed.

      Do you know why I would think that you'd be pissed?

      Because it's people like you who enforce rules like these on others who cannot and will not live under the same.

      That is one reason people think that objectivity is good. Don't have any part in it. And yes, sometimes it is good to be objective, but this is not one of those times and why you cannot see that could be because you don't have any personal stake in it and you cannot or don't have empathy.

    • 2 years ago
  • hombre76
    • 0
      hombre76  
    • hombre76:

      Oh boy I'm playing the worlds tiniest violin for you so called sympathy you claim to have with the family of this victim of yours and my acquiescence to the waste we call a war in Afghanistan. You can bleed all the purple piss you want I don't believe you for a second. your only hope here is to bash liberals as uncaring of our soldiers after you did nothing for the last 8 years to stop Bush and his republican buddies for doing much worse. but hay I guess they had the decency to hide it from you so you didn't have to look at it.

    • 2 years ago
  • J_Jammer
  • MoonLoon
  • hombre76
    • 0
      hombre76  
    • hombre76:

      MOON name the place and time , but only in public you right winger bastards will shoot a man in the back and run. once we see each other then we can start shooting mk pardner?

    • 2 years ago
  • MoonLoon
    • 0
      MoonLoon  
    • hombre76:

      Tomorrow morning, Lagos, Nigeria, on Bar Beach, bring your garden shears. Don't worry I will recognize you right away. You will be the guy on your knees begging the "area boys" for your scrawny life. I will be the man standing nearby laughing his ass off at a loudmouthed fool.

    • 2 years ago
  • hombre76
  • JanforGore
    • 0
      JanforGore  

    • I agree. It showed a lack of journalistic integrity in using his death for sensationalistic means. And I agree, whatever side you may fall on, this is about common decency.

    • 2 years ago
  • pakazak
    • 0
      pakazak  

    • sensationalistic, headline generating self-indulgence of the lowest order.
      i don't care what you believe or on which side of an issue you fall, this is unacceptable.
      I will write to the appropriate office of AP and I urge everyone else to do so also.

    • 2 years ago
  • J_Jammer
  • pakazak
    • 0
      pakazak  
    • pakazak:

      info@ap.org
      To:
      Thomas Curley, President and CEO Associated Press

      I find that the publishing of a photo of a young, dying Marine, Lance Cpl. Joshua M. Bernard of New Portland, Maine, to be without purpose and, at best, sensationalism of the lowest degree. Add to the the direct request by the father of a young man who had given his life that this photograph not be published and I find that your actions are despicable.
      I agree wholeheartedly with Defense Secretary Robert Gates in objecting “in the strongest terms” to your actions.

    • 2 years ago
  • pakazak
  • J_Jammer
  • samthesixth
    • 0
      samthesixth  

    • The family asked for it not to be published. Even if the AP was correct as far as what the photo symbolized, to publish it when the father had specifically asked them not to crosses the decency line.

    • 2 years ago
  • J_Jammer
    • 0
      J_Jammer [removed]  

    • Disgusting.

      They pretend they are doing it for the people.

      Had someone taken a photo of Julie Jacobson mauled by gunfire and published it and showed the gruesome death of a photographer for the AP the AP would have complaints within their own building about that. They'd want that photo not shared. They wouldn't want to see their friend they worked with lying on the ground with bullet holes in her skull and chest.

      Who would want to see their loved one like that?

      My friend died in a motorcycle accident this year and I knew that someone had to identify the body and I know who did it. He was not wearing a helmet and he hit a van. He was going at least 60mph. So whatever the person saw it was not how he'd want to remember his son. But someone had to do it....I cannot imagine the pain that comes with doing something like that.

      Those people at the AP are idiots and heartless and totally not within any moral right to do what they did and anyone agreeing with them has never had to witness what that does to a family....and therefor their opinion isn't worth noting.

    • 2 years ago
  • MoonLoon
    • 0
      MoonLoon  

    • They crossed the line. But, what should we expect from them. They thrive on the suffering of others and have no respect except for the greenback. AP is just another form of papparazi.

    • 2 years ago
  • MoonLoon
    • 0
      MoonLoon  
    • MoonLoon:

      That is a very funny comment. Do you have any idea how many times it has been used? Most frequent posters know why I use that name, so I will not bore you with a repetition of the reason.

      The AP clearly crossed the line by refusing to honor the wishes of a grieving family. They did it for political purposes. If not, why do they not post photos of dying gunshot/stabbing victims from the inner city? Why don't they chase down dying traffic accident victims and publish those photos? I despise war and the harm that our children suffer. However, I also despise hypocrasy. I hope the AP decision maker suffers because of his insensitivity in using a young man's death for corporate and political purposes. Freedom of press should not include the right to infringe on personal liberties. The press is not immune to respecting the rights of citizens.

    • 2 years ago
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