UnEmbeded!
| July 4th, 2008 | Crossposted from The Blog and the BulletZoriah, who was an embeded photojournalist in Iraq, blogs:
A few hours after posting my story on the suicide bombing in Anbar Province, I was woken up by a young marine who took me to receive a phone call. A high ranking Public Affairs Officer told me that they were requesting that I remove my blog post immediately. I asked on what grounds, as media rules state that wounded and killed soldiers may be portrayed in images as long as their name tags and identifiable features are not shown. I made very sure my images followed those guidelines, and questioned a large number of soldiers on base to see if they could find anything at all that would identify the dead. I did this primarily out of respect for the families.
I truly labored with the decision to post these images and I still do. But in my heart of hearts I know that people need to see and feel the reality of this horrible situation. How can things change if all that comes out of Iraq are sanitized, white-washed images of war designed for mainstream media outlets who focus on making money, not on the quality and truth in what they report?
July 5th, 2008 at 10:11 am
How can things change if all that comes out of Iraq are sanitized, white-washed images of war designed for mainstream media outlets who focus on making money, not on the quality and truth in what they report?
They will never true the true horror of this war because they don’t want to admit their complicity in getting popular approval to engage in it in the first place. Just like we cannot be bothered to get a true count of how many Iraqis are dead. Unless you are rich and white your body really does not matter in this society.
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