This morning's LA Times, which seems to have suddenly grown a (small) set, has a very interesting
article that explores Iraq war photos and different publishing numbers per media outlet.
The author discusses a number of reasons why photos haven't been published, then puts this war's photo publishing record in context with US wars back to the beginning of photography and the Civil War.
"We in the news business are not doing a very good job of showing our readers what has really happened over there," said Pim Van Hemmen, assistant managing editor for photography at the Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J.
"Writing in a headline that 1,500 Americans have died doesn't give you nearly the impact of showing one serviceman who is dead," Van Hemmen said. "It's the power of visuals."
A review of six prominent U.S. newspapers and the nation's two most popular newsmagazines during a recent six-month period found almost no pictures from the war zone of Americans killed in action. During that time, 559 Americans and Western allies died. The same publications ran 44 photos from Iraq to represent the thousands of Westerners wounded during that same time.
Many photographers and editors believe they are delivering Americans an incomplete portrait of the violence that has killed 1,797 U.S. service members and their Western allies and wounded 12,516 Americans.
Journalists attribute the relatively bloodless portrayal of the war to a variety of causes -- some in their control, others in the hands of the U.S. military, and the most important related to the far-flung nature of the conflict and the way American news outlets perceive their role.
The article is heavy on editors and publishers reluctance to publish photos of dead and wounded Americans due to the backlash from readers--especially family of the person in the photo.
It also (IMHO) cops out about one of the main reasons for not publishing being "logistical". (Like it wasn't harder to publish photos from Vietnam 35 years ago?)
A good read with some very intense and difficult photos.