Controversial Photo p. 14

By: Mark Fitzgerald

Sight of dead U.S. soldier being dragged through a
mob of jeering Somalis enrages some readers, divides editors
IN TIME, PERHAPS, the recent Associated Press photo of a dead U.S. soldier being dragged through a mob of jeering and kicking Somalis will become a news classic.
Taken by Paul Watson of the Toronto Star, it is the kind of powerful image that seems destined to take its place alongside such photos as the one of a naked Vietnamese girl screaming after she was hit with napalm and the one of a blindfolded hostage paraded before a mob of Iranians at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.
At the moment, however, Watson's photo has enraged some readers and forced journalists in numerous newsrooms to make agonizing decisions.
"Shame on you and other news sources who chose to publish . . . photos . . . of our fallen soldier being dragged through the streets by Somali barbarians," Linda L. Freeman wrote in a letter to the Indianapolis News.
"How would you react if he were your brother, father, son, husband or friend? I'm sure those pictures . . . will haunt the people who loved him for the rest of their lives. You are no more civilized than the desecraters. I'm appalled!" Freeman concluded.
The letter, News editor John Lyst said, was typical of several received by the paper, which ran the photo in black and white on page two.
It was typical of reader reaction at many newspapers, especially those that ran the photo in color on their front pages.
"You are defiling the body of that American soldier as much as those Somalis who dragged him and spit on him," Debby Webber wrote in a letter to the Detroit News.
That paper and its rival, the Detroit Free Press, both of which ran the photo above the fold on the front page, received dozens of phone calls from readers, almost all of them complaints.
Jonathan Friendly, director of the journalism master's program at the University of Michigan, wrote a long commentary piece in the Detroit News Oct. 10 defending publication of the photo.
Despite the very predictable reader anger, most big-circulation newspaper editors found the photo irresistible.
It ran on the front pages of USA Today, New York Times, Newsday, Houston Chronicle and Atlanta Constitution.
"Our impression from what we see is it was used extremely [widely], especially on front pages, alot of front pages," said Tom Stathis, AP senior photo editor for North America.
Stathis said he and other AP editors had no doubts about transmitting the image.
"We just thought that it was important for the debate on the [U.S. involvement in Somalia] issue, that it happened and that it was not our job to hide it," he said.
For a number of papers, using the photo violated a strict policy against publishing photos of dead people.
That was the case at the Forum, Fargo, N.D., news editor Barry Obenchain said.
"We have a general policy of not showing body pictures. Obviously, there are situations where we would disregard that, if, say, the president were killed or something," Obenchain said.
At the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Little Rock, which also has a policy against showing bodies, this was one of those exceptional occasions, wire editor Ben Pollock told the AP.
"It was just so dramatic. That story could not explain what was going on," he said. The Democrat-Gazette received more than 25 calls about the photo, he added.
At two Tennessee newspapers, the decision about whether to publish the photo was much more than a journalism exercise.
The Nashville Tennessean and Clarksville Leaf-Chronicle are the two principal papers that circulate in the area of Fort Campbell, Ky., where the dead soldier was based.
The Tennessean chose not to publish the picture.
"We, as a matter of course, and this is not automatic, do not use body pictures on page one. Because Fort Campbell is so close to us and because usually when there is a military operation it involves Fort Campbell, we are very careful of how we handle" photos of casualties, managing editor C.W. Johnson Jr. said.
The Leaf-Chronicle did publish the photo ? in color across three columns of its front page.
"We got a huge reaction," associate editor Doug Ray said. "I'd say we got at least 100 calls. I think 50 people, more or less, canceled subscriptions. We ran 35 letters to the editor before cutting them off. Since then, given time to reflect on it, people's comments have [mellowed]. Now, some people are saying they understand why we did it.
"We thought it was important that we portray the situation in Somalia as realistically as possible," Ray said. "And we think this picture did that."
In a video age, the furious reader reaction was, in a strange way, somewhat heartening, said Glenn Ritt, editor of the Record, Bergen County, N.J.
"It reinforces the power of the newspaper," Ritt said. "The power of the picture does not go away as it does on television. You can't run away from it."
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