Should U.S. media publish graphic images of war, abortion or
car accidents? Or do such images do more harm than good?
Conor Friedersdorf raises such questions in “The Gutless
Press” (The Atlantic, July/August).
He discusses coverage of the trial of Dr. Kermit Gosnell,
the abortionist convicted of delivering babies alive and then murdering them.
This coverage included descriptions of what Gosnell called “fetal demise” far
more graphic than anything normally found in the media.
Friedersdorf points out that “members of the pro-life
movement have long believed that they can win converts by confronting Americans
with ‘what abortion really is’ in the most-graphic terms possible.”
On the other hand, critics of U.S. drone strikes wish “more
Americans saw graphic photos of the results: the charred corpses, the severed
arms and legs, the bloodied children.”
While many pro-life activists charge the U.S. media with a
pro-choice bias, the fact is, writes Friedersdorf, “the American media sanitize
almost all death." He adds, “During the Iraq War, an American could watch hours
of TV coverage without ever seeing the dead body of a U.S. soldier.”
While the news media have grown less likely to publish
explicitly violent images in recent decades, portrayals of violence in film and
video games have intesified.
Why the change? Friedersdorf believes it’s about not
offending the audience. “And because consumers do not want grisly images,
neither do advertisers,” he writes. At the same time, the military has clamped
down on access to combat scenes.
Friedersdorf notes that “other countries’ media do not
contrive such a bloodless world.” He cites a study that shows that foreign
media are generally more willing to show graphic images.
Susan Sontag, among others, have argued that showing graphic
images might lead to other responses than “shocking people of conscience into
action.” They may, in fact, inure us to horror.
Graphic images of war certainly haven’t stopped violent
killings, Friedersdorf notes. But that doesn’t mean they haven’t had an impact
on public thinking. He cites certain images from the Vietnam War and the photos
of torture at the Abu Ghraib prison as examples.
Friedersdorf goes on to point out that “images in media
determine not just what we see but how journalists describe the world, and thus
what we know about it and how we talk about it.” It might be harder for the
government to talk about “collateral damage,” for example, “if an article or TV footage
included the image of a bloody corpse,” he writes.
Likewise, he adds, “it is difficult to discuss ‘fetal
demise’ abstractly when the accompanying images show the little arms and legs
that were dismembered.”
Without doubt, images are powerful. Think about artwork
depicting scenes from Scripture (no photos are available): David holding
Goliath’s severed head, soldiers killing infants on Herod’s orders, Jesus’
crucifixion. We may read these stories without fully appreciating their horror.
Friedersdorf concludes that “the case for publishing graphic
images of killing has less to do with the merits of a specific policy view than
with photography’s power to keep us from evading a subject entirely.”
