Seeing a bit of the tsunami coverage on TV, I’ve been struck by how much more likely American TV is to show death, or more precisely, dead bodies or people being swept to their deaths. I’m reminded that the U.S. government was offended last year when Arab television stations showed the burned bodies of Americans and other pictures of dead soldiers.
Then there’s this piece from The Hartford Courant about the tsunami aftermath.
We saw more dead bodies in photos and on videotape than we usually do. Most of the human figures were distant or covered. You could not usually make out facial features. But some images, even in prestigious news magazines and newspapers, were much more personal. For example, Newsweek devoted a two-page spread to a close-up shot of a drowned boy wept over by his mother in India.
Would a respectable U.S. publication or TV outlet show a dead American child with a grieving mother? I doubt it. The news executives would fear a deluge of complaints from the public. Apparently, the Newsweek editors felt there would be less outrage over its two-page photo of a dead Indian boy and his mother.
…. If it’s OK to show us images of dead Indians, Sri Lankans, Thais and Indonesians killed by a giant wave, then isn’t it OK to show us images of dead Americans? We see virtually no images of Americans killed in Iraq. The U.S. government will not even allow us to see images of flag-draped coffins of American soldiers. Why is that? Do we think that only Americans deserve privacy in death?
Maybe the Bush administration, which demands a blackout of flag-drapped coffins, has the answer.
Update: Here’s a story that suggests it’s the print media that’s leading the way to more graphic coverage of death.