The Right to Know the Ugly Stuff

I came across an editorial recently about the strange fact that almost no pictures of the physical devastation that has occured in Iraq or Afghanstan find their way into our mainstream media. The writer made the point that if you hadn't used the internet after 9/11, then you would have had no idea of the real carnage that took place - you saw the building fall, but not the shredded bodies of those who had to jump, etc. In my mind, I was just beginning to question why in the world anyone would want to see such things, but then the article answered my question before it was fully formed in my head. If, for instance, the pictures of the human devastation had not been widely televised, the enormous response in donations from private sources would probably not have happened. If, for example, the pictures of Bull Conners turning fire hoses on the nonviolent protesters in Alabama hadn't reached middle america in the 60's, the public outcry that resulted might never have provided the extra impetus needed to get civil rights legislation passed. If we hadn't seen the pictures from Abu Ghraib, smarmy, mealy-mouthed republicans would still be able to look you in the eye and say with no fear of contradiction "We are only in Iraq to help people".

Why haven't we seen any of the hundreds of thousands of Iraq citizens who have surely been maimed? Is that significant? Are the ridiculously low estimates of civilian losses and injuries that do reach our mainstream press significant?

I tell you, I am still shaking my head that they made such a stink that the public got to see flag-draped coffins from Iraq and Afghanistan. Are we so delicate that we can't handle the truth? Who's zoomin' who, here?
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Where are the Images from Iraq & Afghanistan?
Death on the Living Room Floor
By BRUCE JACKSON
Since the tsunami hit, the mainstream press and, to a lesser extent, the broadcast and cable network news programs, have been chockfull of images of the freshly dead. We've seen images of bodies of children and adults where the water left them; we've seen them arranged in neat rows; we've seen them bagged and stacked.
Television broadcasts have, in the main, been more suggestive, less specific, more distant in their images than the print press: often you knew that lump was a dead body only because a chattering reporter told you it was. TV executives say that is because their images come into people's homes where children might come upon them unawares, so they have to limit the reality on the airwaves. Hardly anyone believes they have the children in mind when they plan their programs.
What is perhaps more worthy of note than how many tsunami dead we've seen, however, is how many other recent dead we have not seen.
The mainstream media showed, for example, no blood and guts resulting from the 9/11 attacks. Most of the people murdered that day were pulverized or vaporized, but not all. Some of the most horrific images were the sidewalk remains of those who leapt from the World Trade Center's upper stories before the structures collapsed. The New York Times published a photo of a man diving, his body almost tranquil in flight, the implications of the image horrific. But nothing at ground level. None of the print press and none of the mainstream electronic press published anything at ground level. You could find those images on some hard-to-find web sites: skin and heads with insides elsewhere, with bodies looking like punctured balloons.
Those images showed what every cop and combat soldier knows: violent death trivializes and shifts to someplace you do not want to go every single thing you ever thought about life. But the press-individually or in some collaborative council-decided those images were too much for you to bear, so (unless you roamed the web) you never saw them.
Likewise the carnage in the Holy Land. How many reports have you read of Palestinian bombers with explosives strapped to their bodies, perhaps with added layers of nails to provide extra shrapnel to maim and mutilate whoever wasn't close enough to be killed outright? How many reports have you read of Israeli tanks blowing up inhabited buildings or nervous Israeli soldiers shooting down ordinary people on their way to work or children on their way to school? And how many Holy Land images of shattered bodies, of a hand, a jaw, an emptied skull, of guts draped over the hood of a car have you seen?
Likewise the carnage suffered by US troops in Iraq. You've read about the numbers of U.S. dead and mutilated, and perhaps (if you watch PBS "Newshour") you've seen head and shoulders studio photographs of the most recently killed soldiers. But how many images how you seen of American soldiers dead on the road, their eyes and mouths open, if they still had eyes and mouths? How many images have you see of the limbs blown off the thousands of amputees now filling VA hospitals? How many images have you see of body parts blasted into the roofs and seats and floors of Humvees they hadn't gotten around to armorplating?...

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