Abu Ghraib and Media Ethics

On May 10, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld fielded questions from Congress over the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal. He all but promised there would be more photos and videos that would be even more repulsive: “Beyond abuse of prisoners, there are other photos that depict incidents of physical violence towards prisoners, acts that can only be described as blatantly sadistic, cruel and inhuman… There are many more photographs and indeed some videos. Congress and the American people and the rest of the world need to know this… ” The administration faced a tough decision: Do we hand all the evidence to the press now and confront the issue head on? Or do we sit back, almost certain that images of US instigated barbarism will appear on the front pages of global newspapers over the coming months? It seems the choice was to hope and pray that the worst has passed. Meanwhile, pundits, columnists, and average Americans discussed and debated the events at Abu Ghraib. The cultural right has been uncharacteristically discordant in its assessment. For example, the religous right has blamed such things as moral relativism, gays, porn, feminism. Still other conservatives didn’t see it as a problem. “This is no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation and we’re going to ruin people’s lives over it and we’re going to hamper our military effort, and then we are going to really hammer them because they had a good time,” said Rush Limbaugh, presumably informed that more evidence would soon surface.

Some friends and I were talking about all the twists and turns of this scandal and agreed that a particularly thorny point is the role of the media. We now know that Rumsfeld was right and the next wave of photos and videos has arrived. Nick Berg, an American contractor in Iraq was beheaded in response to the release of the earlier photos. In light of the new evidence, should the media show restraint? What if innocent people in Iraq are murdered because of the heightened shock and anger? More than anything, perception about the successes and failures of this war is shaped by the media. After viewing the images over and over, the natural response is, “this war is just so fu–ed.” The stories of democratic victories and better standards of living are buried. So perspective is almost impossible to achieve. And the dominant perception is determined by the media’s chosen story lines. For the record, I think the media is absolutely right to report the abuse–the torture (what else do you call the rape of a small boy?) — including showing graphic pictures, sans insulting pixelation. I think we’ve largely been ignorant of the darker side of war and need to see this stuff. At the same time, the horrors at Abu Ghraib don’t tell the whole story of what is happening in Iraq.

May 21st, 2004