Woman loses job over coffins photo

Seattle Times: Tami Silicio, a Kuwait-based cargo worker whose photograph of flag-draped coffins of fallen U.S. soldiers ran last Sunday in the Seattle Times (and which I posted here last night), has been fired for violating U.S. government and Maytag Aircraft regulations. (Photo credit: >©TAMI SILICIO/ZUMA Press.) Silicio says she hoped publication of the photo would help soldiers' families understand the care and devotion that civilians and military crews dedicate to the task of returning the soldiers home.

Thanks for helping spread the truth, Tami. (And thanks to Jim Romenesko for the brief.)

Seattle Times executive editor Michael R. Fancher explains why the paper ran it: Powerful photograph offered chance to tell an important story.

Over at E-Media Tidbits, Steve Outing adds this:

What's this got to do with online journalism and new media? Plenty. ... [A]s this episode demonstrates, everybody's a reporter these days. With digital cameras, photo cell-phones, and nearly ubiquitous Internet access, constraints on "the press" only apply to professional journalists; they often don't apply -- cannot apply -- to device-carrying members of the public who happen to witness, say, a planeload of caskets returning from Iraq. Government efforts to limit what the public sees are increasingly futile.

And the Washington Post reports that the White House, furious about the photo leaks, is ordering a halt to all photos of coffins returning from the war front. Looks like this is a job for citizen journalism.