E-Media Tidbits

I had to laugh when I saw the coverage of Saddam Hussein's underwear photos published by The Sun newspaper in the U.K. (Here's a BBC News report on the brouhaha.) U.S. military officials are steaming mad that the photos were leaked and published by the tabloid.

What's laughable is not the former dictator's skivvies, but military leaders' naivety about the media world we now live in. They don't have to like it, of course, but in a world of small digital cameras, photo cell phones, e-mail, "citizen journalists," and several million blogs, for any organization to think that they can control photos like this is absurd. The Pentagon should have learned that lesson when it tried and failed to prevent publication of photos of flag-draped caskets of dead American soldiers coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan.

It's only a bit surprising that a mainstream newspaper chose to publish the leaked photos. But even if Sun editors had been more discreet and decided not to run Saddam in his underwear on their front page, you can be assured that the images would have turned up on some blog, then spread around the Internet in a flash. At which point, some mainstream media outlets would feel justified in running them as well, since they'd be "all over the Internet."

I'm not suggesting that these photos should have been published; the argument could be made that their publication violated the prisoner-treatment rules of the Geneva Convention. I am suggesting that there's little anyone could have done once someone with a digital camera or photo phone got access to Saddam's private prison space. We do not live in the same world as we did even a decade ago.