June 22, 2004
IT'S NOT ABOUT THE DEAD BUT THE LIVING:
Senate Backs Ban on Photos of G.I. Coffins: The Bush administration's policy of barring the media from photographing the coffins of service members killed in Iraq won the backing of the Senate on Monday. (SHERYL GAY STOLBERG, 6/22/04, NY Times)
PBS Masterpiece Theatre is running a terrific detective series this month, Foyle's War. It stars Michael Kitchen as Christopher Foyle, as a DCI who gets stuck fighting crime at home instead of the Nazis abroad. What makes the show fascinating is that the home front is populated by petty bureaucrats, fascists, pacifists, cowards, profiteers, and the like and thick with the atmosphere of fear and anti-German/anti-Italian hysteria. At any rate, this week's installment included a mysterious military installation that ultimately turned out to be shrouded in secrecy for a simple but surprising reason: they were making coffins there to bury the anticipated dead of the Blitz, but they were keeping it quiet for reason of morale. The foreman said he hoped Foyle would understand and, of course, he did.
Posted by Orrin Judd at June 22, 2004 9:49 AMIt's not about the Dead but the "beheaded"
Posted by: h-man at June 22, 2004 1:43 PMAs a newspaperman, I think the return of the coffins is a new story that should be covered if reporters want to cover it.
As a citizen, I understand that TV would cover it and would do it in a disgusting manner.
Tough call.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at June 22, 2004 4:02 PMIt's tough to decide whether you're a citizen or a journalist first?
Posted by: oj at June 22, 2004 4:10 PMWhat part of the retun of these coffins constitutes "news"? What would be "new" after the second or third time? That people die in war?
Now if the reporters then went and reported on the lives of the people in those coffins, and the sacrifices that they made that put them there, and just as another item some sort of tally sheet like Ted Kopel did, now that might be news.
(Did the press ever show a picture of the returning coffins of Dan Pearl, Nick Berg, or Paul Johnson? I didn't look for such pictures, so I might have missed them.)
Orrin, sure. You ought to understand that even better than I do, given your dedication to the proposition that everyone ought to conform.
I'm in the anticonformity business.
Raoul, the press is full of stories about the lives and background of the killed. Excessively so, in my view.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at June 22, 2004 5:19 PMOh, for Christ's sake, Harry. If you're a newspaperman then you're in the conformity business. Do stop flattering yourself.
Posted by: joe shropshire at June 22, 2004 10:25 PM