E-Media Tidbits

Last weekend, the Seattle Times published a powerful photograph (PDF) of a planeload of coffins, draped with American flags, bearing the bodies of American soldiers killed in Iraq. The Times got the image from a Seattle contract worker stationed in Kuwait, who snapped the photo while on the job. Today (as noted on Romenesko), the news is that the woman lost her job because she violated company and government policy that attempts to keep such images of American military dead from public view.

What's this got to do with online journalism and new media? Plenty. The U.S. government since 1991 has made it policy to prohibit the press from photographing returning military dead. But as 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.