UK Guardian missed point of dying Marine's picture

It's not about sanitizing anything. It's about grabbing headlines no matter who gets hurt. You really have to wonder if any of the people making the decision to publish this picture ever wondered if it was their own family member. What would they want in the last second of their life especially if the death was like this? The key word is "want" and that is exactly what they took away from the Bernard family. It should have been up to them and what they wanted.

Much like the fallen in flag draped coffins, the families are allowed to make their own decision about media coverage or not and that is as it should be. We can respect that when the coffin does not show the face but we cannot respect that when it is in the last second of their lives?

I've spent over half my life looking at pictures of wounded from war and graphic pictures of death. The point is there have been a lot fewer ones of the dead than the living wounded. There is a reason for this. It's not that photographers in the past did not witness them dying. It's because they had enough respect in that moment to not take the picture of them. There were many photographers in Vietnam but most of the photographs I've seen were of wounded and men helping the wounded. Those were powerful images. The war was not sanitized but they had deeply rooted ethics.

The debate is over publishing the photo or not, but you have to wonder why it was taken in the first place. What was in Julie Jacobson's mind? She said it was to show "sacrifice and the bravery of those fighting in Afghanistan" but while it shows sacrifice as high as it can get, it does not show respect for the life gone because he was brave.

Would she want some photographer to take a picture of the last moments of a family member of her's? Would she want the right to decide if the picture was ever seen or not? Above all, would she want someone thinking the death of someone she loved would make a great picture? That's the point. She was not exactly a stranger to his unit. She was with them. She must have known him even slightly. Did it occur to her that he had a family and that family would have to see that picture? Did it enter into her mind that photo would be engrained in their minds for the rest of their lives? Did it enter into her mind that as they stand at the cemetery, in front of the flag draped coffin, they will see the way he died and the fact that as he was dying, someone was taking a picture?

The debate about publishing it or not wouldn't have happened if she thought about what she was doing while he was dying.

Pictures of dying marine bring war home to America
Angry debate in US as agency releases picture of dying marine in Afghanistan

Gaby Hinsliff, political editor The Observer, Sunday 6 September 2009
It is a graphic image of the harsh realities of war: the fatally wounded young marine lying crumpled in the mud, his vulnerable face turned to the camera. And it is one the US defence secretary would rather you did not see.

Lance Corporal Joshua Bernard, pictured being tended by comrades in southern Afghanistan, died of his injuries soon after. Now the release of this record of the 21-year-old's last moments has divided America, prompting furious debate over the sanitisation of war at a critical time for the military offensive.

The US defence secretary, Robert Gates, condemned the decision by the news agency Associated Press to publish. "I cannot imagine the pain and suffering Lance Corporal Bernard's death has caused his family. Why your organisation would purposefully defy the family's wishes, knowing full well that it will lead to yet more anguish, is beyond me.

"Your lack of compassion and common sense in choosing to put this image of their maimed and stricken child on the front page of multiple American newspapers is appalling."

However, AP, whose photographer Julie Jacobson took the shot after being caught in the middle of an ambush while accompanying marines on patrol, said it had acted only after a "period of reflection" and argued that the picture illustrated the sacrifice and the bravery of those fighting in Afghanistan. "We feel it is our journalistic duty to show the reality of the war there, however unpleasant and brutal that sometimes is," said Santiago Lyon, the director of photography for AP.

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Pictures of dying marine bring war home to America

Should AP photo of dying Marine be published?
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