The Bernie Bernard Photo: When Horrors Of War & Rules of Journalism Collide

THE CONTROVERSIAL ASSOCIATED PRESS PHOTOGRAPH

The traditional if sometimes shopworn rules of newspaper journalism -- from making sure every story answers the classic Who, What, Where, When, Why and How to more complicated considerations, sometimes have to be observed in the breach during war.

Two recent developments in Afghanistan put those considerations to the test:

* The kidnapping and subsequent release of New York Times reporter Stephen Farrell (right) whose Afghan translator was killed during the reporter's rescue. The Times had kept the abductions secret.

* Distribution by The Associated Press of a photograph taken by Jill Jacobson of mortally wounded Marine Lance Corporal Joshua "Bernie" Bernard (below, left) over the objections of his family and the Defense Department.

Having covered a few wars myself, I believe that there is only one journalistic consideration that must be observed save for the rarest of instances: Revealing the location of a combat unit on the battlefield. From there, it's case by case for me.

That so noted, the Times' decision to keep secret the abduction of Farrell and his translator out of concern for the men's safety was hypocritical.

That decision was made easier because there apparently was no ransom demand or other conditions conveyed by the Taliban kidnappers before they were overwhelmed by British commandos early yesterday morning, but it is hypocritical because the Times routinely reports other war-zone kidnappings, notably NGO workers.

The decision to distribute the photograph of 21-year-old Bernard, taken just seconds after he had been hit by a grenade during a Taliban ambush in Helmand Province on August 14, is substantially more problematic. The image shows two Marines leaning over his body in an effort to help him, and there a puddle of blood is visible.

The objections of the Marine's family and Defense Secretary Gates, who had been alerted that the AP was considering distribution of the photograph, were based primarily on the fact that Bernard was in the act of dying and would succumb on an operating table from a blood clot in his heart.

The AP debated at length whether to distribute the photo and showed it to Bernard's father, himself a retired Marine. The AP story with which the photo was distributed two weeks after Bernard's death included a statement that the decision was made to use the photo because it "conveys the grimness of war and the sacrifice of young men and women fighting it."

The debate among newspaper editors also was vigorous, and in the end few papers ran the photo and sometimes only as part of online photo galleries.

Under most circumstances, military affairs blogger Thomas Ricks (left) is by no means in favor of censorship, but he spoke for many journalists and others in objecting to the photo's distribution, which he believed it to be "wrong" and "morally indefensible."

"The dead feel no pain," wrote Ricks, "But the dying do, and publishing the photo transmitted LCpl Bernard's pain to his family."

Sarah Palin got it exactly wrong (of course) when she commented that the AP had run the story merely to "exploit" the Marine's death. In my humble view, the family's legitimate objections are trumped by the importance -- no, make that the necessity -- of bringing that grimness and sacrifice that the AP noted into the homes of as many Americans as possible.

While Gates certainly had a responsibility to convey the family's point of view, he otherwise has no standing in the debate because photographer Jacobson and Alfred De Montesquiou, the AP reporter whom she was accompanying, did not violate the rules for journalists embedded with U.S. troops.

The grimness and sacrifices of the Iraq war were sanitized to a substantial extent by the Bush administration not because it wanted to protect the sensitivities of GI families but because powerful images might provoke discussion about an unnecessary and arguably immoral conflict that has taken over 4,300 American lives.

August was the bloodiest month so far in Afghanistan and the deaths of Bernard and 1,340 or so other Americans since the post-9/11 invasion are merely antecedents to a toll that is likely to grow exponentially absent a change in policy by the Obama administration.

Meanwhile, there are plenty of antecedents for the controversial photograph from the Civil War photographs of Matthew Brady, who was the father of photojournalism, to Vietnam War images such as a naked Kim Phuc (above, right) running down Highway 1 after a napalm attack and a Life magazine cover of a Vietnam War scene (left) that is eerily similar to the Bernard image.

The Afghan war is at a turning point and the more debate -- and more graphic images and accounts -- the better.