the war in Iraq, via social media

SF Chronicle Executive VP Phil Bronstein talks up the value of social media when it comes to war coverage, vis-a-vis WikiLeaks' recent leaks of encrypted government footage that tracks what transpired when an Apache helicopter crew opened fire on a dozen people -- including two Reuters photographers -- on the streets of Baghdad back in 2007.

He contrasts war coverage via social media versus his own reporting in the Phillipines over 20 years ago, when his notebook and his photog's camera were the only instruments of recorded fact.

From his piece in today's Huffpo:

I've seen a fair number of people killed in countries at war, including combatants, journalists and civilians. Even at ground level, though, in the midst of bone and blood spray, sorting things out is near impossible.

I am sure of one thing: tragedy aside, this is all good for us in the bigger sense, starting with the video release. Transparency is the victor here. More information and even more yelling back and forth gives everyone more data and opportunity to make up their own minds. And it keeps life-and-death topics like war fully in the bull's-eye heat of aggressive social interaction.

That's what's really changed since my war correspondent days. No one today has to be a passive non-combatant in the important moments of our culture.

finally, redux

The WaPo reports today that, after Obama has said that he is reconsidering the ban on photographs of the coffins of war dead arriving at Dover, the Pentagon is investigating, according to Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell, "'a way to better balance an individual family's privacy concerns with the right of the American people to honor these fallen heroes" and 'is disposed, leaning, tilting towards trying to do more, if possible' to allow coverage of the ceremony."

Coincidentally -- or do I mean "ironically" -- this issue was the subject of the post that kicked off my adventures in blogland back in August. It's also been the topic for many an in-class debate.

From the WaPo story:

"Pictures of casualties have long played into the politics of a war -- most notably in Vietnam, dubbed the "living-room war" for its extensive television coverage, including footage of coffins rolling off planes at Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii as if off a conveyor belt.

President George H.W. Bush's administration imposed the ban on media coverage of the arrival of fallen troops' remains at Dover Air Force Base during the Gulf War in February 1991. It came about after a controversy arose when Bush held a news conference at the same moment the first U.S. casualties were returning to Dover the day after the U.S. invasion of Panama in 1989, and three television networks carried the events live on split screen, with Bush appearing at one point to joke while on the opposite screen the solemn ceremony unfolded at the Delaware base.

Indeed, starting in the 1990s, politicians and generals used the term "the Dover test" to describe the public's tolerance for troop casualties."

Ironically, President George W. Bush made an exception to the ban in September 2001, when the Air Force allowed a photograph of the remains of a victim of the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon.

Again from the story:

"'When it was in the government's interest, they allowed photographers to take pictures,' said Meredith Fuchs, general counsel to the National Security Archive, which provided legal representation for the Begleiter lawsuit that led the Pentagon to release in 2005 hundreds of photographs taken by government photographers. 'They wanted us to be angry over a terrorist attack,' she said.

"Soon after the war in Afghanistan started in October 2001, however, the Pentagon restated the ban on coverage at Dover, and in March 2003, the same month that the U.S. military invaded Iraq, it expanded the policy prohibiting media coverage of the coffins of fallen troops to other ports of arrival as well."

Photo courtesy U.S. Air Force via Reuters

finally...

The House has proposed a bill to lift the ban on photos of the coffins of military dead returning from Iraq. I think it's about time. And you?

j.linx will crank up in earnest once the school year starts, providing updates for current students, connections to former ones, links to useful sites, as well as subjects for lively debate for anyone interested in journalism.

In the meantime, let me know where you are, what you're doing, and most importantly, what you think about the above -- or anything else. Catch you in September. bk