Psycho Sensei

Dan Gilmor often has important insights into how the world is working. This one is something that's been bothering the Psycho Sensei for a long time. Read on.

There's a lot more to the story of the photos of coffins of the brave men and women who died in Iraq. As the New York Times reports today, the firing of the civilian contractor who gave such a picture to the Seattle Times only underscores government hypocrisy. As the Times article notes:

The firing underscored the strictness with which the Pentagon and the Bush administration have pursued a policy of forbidding news organizations to showing images of the homecomings of the war dead at military bases. They have argued that the policy was put in place during the first war in Iraq, and that it is simply an effort to protect the sensitivities of military families.

Executives at news organizations, many of whom have protested the policy, said last night that they had not known that the Defense Department itself was taking photographs of the coffins arriving home, a fact that came to light only when Russ Kick, the operator of The Memory Hole, filed his request.

This just bolsters the claim that the only sensibilities being protected here are those of our political leaders who are willing for the sad images of this war to be public only after they've left office. They're not protecting the families. They're protecting themselves.

The other lesson here is the way independent news operations like the Memory Hole are helping to reshape journalism. The little guy, once again, beat the rest of us.

[Dan Gillmor's eJournal]