Where are the Bodies? That's the question David Carr asks in his Times column today, nothing that photos of the bodies of dead American soldiers in Iraq are virtually nonexistent in the U.S. media. He's right, —and his implication, that public attitudes towards the war would probably be even more negative if such photographs were published, is probably also correct.

So what explains the photo deficit? It's not what you might think—that the Bush administration has stage-managed war coverage to such an extent that it keeps such photos out of the press, or even from being taken.

Instead, the cause is apparently that, since it's so hard to stay safe in Iraq, the photos are hard to get. And two—and I suspect that this reason is more powerful than the first—the American media won't run the pictures when they do get them. It's self-censorship: They're afraid that the photos will anger readers (and advertisers), opening themselves to charges that they "don't support the troops." In that way—creating a climate in which Americans are quick to question the patriotism of those who do anything to challenge the war—the Bush administration has affected war coverage.

Ironically, today's Times also carries a story on the forensic scientists investigating mass graves in Iraq. The paper has no problem running a photograph of the skeletons of Iraquis killed by Saddam Hussein....

So what's the difference? Is it that the American military facilitated these photographs? That readers won't get offended by Iraqui skeletons as they might by pictures of dead American soldiers?

Either way, it seems to me that the lack of such photo journalism has been a great boon to the Bush Administration....and a great failure for American journalism. Where are the editors who will show some spine and run journalism that might actually make people mad?



(Erik de Castro, the New York Times)
Iraqui skeletons in the desert outside Baghdad.  ¶ 8:36 AM