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DAY 130 | SOCIAL & POLITICAL COMMENTARY |
The War Machine
CENSORSHIP IN THE NAME OF “GOOD TASTE”
Sydney Schanberg, a journalist and war correspondent during the Vietnam War, recently sat on a panel titled ‘The Power of Wartime Photography,” sponsored by the Museum of Jewish Heritage and cosponsored by the National September 11 Memorial & Museum. His comments indicated his belief that photographs “were a superior way to explain what was happening...” but he also expressed that as a war photographer, “you come away knowing that you never did enough. That you escaped because of a lot of things—luck, you’re American, you have a passport, you have money, and, of course, if you are in a third world country, there is the accident of birth.”
Svetlana Mintcheva, the Director of Programs for the National Coalition Against Censorship, also sat on the panel. She is quoted as saying “atrocity images can make enormous political power, and that’s why they’re always subject to censorship.” She also added that “censorship masquerades very frequently as good taste...”1
War photography affords the public a way of looking at a topic they otherwise do not have access to, allowing us to see the story behind the event and to draw our own conclusions. —MLR
Here’s our mission. A combat crew receives final instructions just before taking off in a mighty YB-17 bomber from a bombardment squadron base at Langley Field, Virginia, 1942. Photo by Alfred T. Palmer; courtesy Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.