Digital cameras as participatory journalism

Watching Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's testimony today, I was struck by his answer when he said that the military was helpless against anyone with a digital camera who can take photographs of atrocities in the Abu Ghraib prison and share them with the world.

It appears this is an underappreciated aspect of the scandal. I don't have any information about the circumstances under which these photos were taken, but it's quite possible that a GI might not have taken such photos with a film camera (where someone would see them in the processing lab).

In other words, this scandal could not have occurred four or five years ago, before citizens (including US troops) achieved the power to be visual reporters. There's no question that, but for the publication and airing of these photos, the reports of the prisoner abuse would have wound up buried on page A19.

David Brooks asked on tonight's NewsHour: "Can we fight a war in the media age?"

Yes, although atrocities will be much harder to cover up.

At E-Media Tidbits today, Vin Crosbie wrote that he now thinks he underestimated the power of amateur photojournalism.

He notes that Peter Howe, former director of photography for Life magazine and curator of an exhibit on the Iraq war now running at the International Center of Photography in New York, told AP, "The iconic images coming out of this war may be the amateur photographs of Iraqi prisoners."

And this comes only two weeks after the photos of caskets of U.S. war dead were forwarded to a Seattle Times photo editor from a friend who received them by e-mail from the civilian contractor whose digital camera snapped the photos.

Here's the Army Investigation Report from GlobalSecurity.org. And the Washington Post has a slide show on the photos released so far. It's in java, so I don't think I can link to it directly. Instead, go here; it's halfway down the right nav. The photos are also at The Memory Hole.

Later: This story will almost certainly mushroom in the coming weeks. Here's the latest from Newsday: US ignored torture allegations. US officials in Baghdad and Washington ignored human rights monitors' repeated pleas for official investigations of American abuse, torture and killings of Iraqi prisoners over the past year, international and Iraqi human rights official said.

Also: Bernie Goldbach writes in IrishEyes: "Expect to see heavy-handed military restrictions on anything with a camera lens in future deployments of military members into war zones."