[Leica] covering the news....

[photo.forrest at earthlink.net (Philip Forrest)]

Of course, but I don't want the news to be endangering the lives of our
military. If you embed with the US military, you have to play by their
rules. The citizens can make up their minds, but let them do it after
the fact, by some time. The journalist should have used the chain of
command for release authority as per his agreement. I understand that
we all want complete and unfettered access to information and freedom
of speech everywhere, but part of that painful truth is that
sometimes the situation on the ground dictates that everyone with
information shut up for a while.
There is no true free press anywhere yes, but the greatest amount of
censorship happens not by some "big brother" or the government, but by
managing editors who need to sell advertising. Everything comes back to
money and Angelina Jolie or Barack Obama beat dead service members
every day of the week when it comes to circulation. No one should kid
themselves that the NYT isn't making more money off of the ousted
journalist than they would on a page 12 article featuring the photo.
This war is an afterthought to most people in comparison to other
smokescreen "news." 
Phil






Philip,
The truth is the truth, however painful. Why hide it? Let the citizens make
up their minds themselves. This article brings home the fact that there is
no true free press in the world - only varying degrees of freedom. When you
read news anywhere, you must be aware of the slant and prejudices inherent
in what you are reading, i.e. NYT vs WSJ.
Cheers
Jayanand

On Sun, Jul 27, 2008 at 3:20 AM, Philip Forrest <photo.forrest@earthlink.net
> wrote:  

> I could have taken photos of lots of dead Marines. That could have been
> considered part of my job. I didn't want to though. I didn't want to
> photograph a lot of what I did, but it was my job. I lost enough
> friends out in Iraq that I didn't need to capture that memory forever.
> I'll have it forever. I respect the men and women who've died. Their
> war is over and there is nothing but peace for them now. Us who
> survived have the hard battle to deal with. Memory.
> There are a few things I agree with on the DoD side, and a few things I
> agree with on the journalist side. If he did indeed break some
> protocol, then he deserved to get kicked out. Were he military, he'd
> have been tried at a courts martial possibly. On the security side, I
> completely understand the DoD point of view. The enemy is extremely
> smart and if they can use any intelligence gathered from the internet
> to find a weak spot in our tactics, then again, the journalist is in
> the wrong. I DO believe that there should be more imagery coming out of
> Iraq and Afghanistan, but not if it endangers my comrades.
>
> Further, this war CANNOT be compared to Vietnam in regard to imagery
> and journalism. There was no way for the enemy to use photos such as
> these in a timely fashion since most film was sent back to the
> publication it was shot for, then developed, then edited, and then
> possibly used for publication. We all have access to the means of
> production now. Remember Nick Berg and the many beheadings which were
> seen on the internet during 2004 alone. The internet is free
> information, pure and simple and it's quite easy to do a little
> snooping to find out who got bombed, where, when, how and possibly what
> tactics were used. Blogs are a product of our egos. Now that we can
> take a digital photo of a dead Marine then post it on the internet soon
> afterwards, we do so in order to get attention. A kind of "look at me!
> look at me! Look what I made! I risked MY life to take this photo of
> this guy who GAVE his life for it, all for you! Pay attention to me!"
> This is what I think of exploitative bloggers. There is a time and a
> place for showing our dead. It's after the family has done their
> grieving. After we have paid our respects to our fallen friends. After
> the security environment surrounding the death has changed enough that
> it can't be exploited to hurt us. Until then, take the photos and just
> keep them for the future. War hasn't changed at all in all of
> history. We all are wounded and all die the same way. The photos
> can wait for a while, they'll still have plenty of impact later on.
> Maybe put the camera down once in a while and hold the hand of that
> Marine who is bleeding out.
>
> Phil Forrest
>
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>  

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