The MSM Strikes Back?

Gail Shister is an excellent TV and radio columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer. She gets a little too chatty and a little too cute for me at times, but she definitely knows her way around her subject matter. What follows is her most recent column that appeared today.

To show or not show bodies
Networks won't be dictated to by FEMA.

Should networks show images of dead bodies from New Orleans?

The Federal Emergency Management Agency prefers they don't. Media experts and network executives say a government agency shouldn't shape post-Hurricane Katrina coverage.

Particularly when that agency is FEMA.

"This is about message management, not sensitivity," says Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism. "FEMA's message management is as messed up as its disaster management."

Under blistering attack for its slow response to flood-ravaged New Orleans and surrounding areas, FEMA discourages journalists from accompanying their boats as they recover bodies.

As many as 10,000 people have died, according to estimates. Thousands of bodies have been floating in floodwater since the levees were breached Aug. 30.

FEMA has no official policy on photographing bodies, says agency rep Mark Pfeifle. It does, however, advise against the practice out of respect for the families of dead and missing loved ones, he says.

Also, FEMA needs space in its boats for rescuers and recovered bodies, he says. Still, several news organizations, including CNN yesterday, have ridden in agency craft, he adds.

Alex Jones, director of Harvard University's Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, labels FEMA's stance a public-relations move.

"I think they want to minimize the perception that the government didn't do its job," says Jones, a former New York Times reporter and Pulitzer Prize-winner. "I'm very suspicious of their motives."

CBS's Marcy McGinnis, senior vice president, news coverage, draws a parallel between FEMA's request in New Orleans and the Bush administration's ban on media photographing of flag-draped coffins of troops arriving at Dover Air Force Base from Iraq and Afghanistan.

In both cases, the government said it was disrespectful to show images of dead Americans.

"I find nothing more respectful than a casket, draped in an American flag, being carried by a military honor guard," McGinnis says.

CBS would never show a close-up of a dead person's face, she says. Before running any video, "we take into consideration what time it would air, and on what broadcast. We are totally respectful of the dead and how we portray them."

While the government can control media access to Dover, it cannot prevent journalists in New Orleans from following FEMA's boats in their own vessels during recovery missions, says Rosenstiel, whose organization is associated with Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism.

"One of the reasons the press is particularly impassioned about this story is precisely because the government wasn't equipped to corral reporters the way they typically do on most major stories," he says. "We've probably seen more dead bodies from New Orleans than from Iraq."

The experts agree that images of the dead are an important element in telling the catastrophic New Orleans story, and that those images should be in good taste and shot from a distance.

"These are difficult and delicate operations for the authorities," says Bob Steele, who teaches ethics at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, a journalism think tank in St. Petersburg, Fla.

"It's our obligation as journalists to be there, to seek and report the truth as meaningfully as possible. ... Skillful videographers can capture the images in ways that are both truthful and respectful."

Jon Petrovich, chairman of the broadcast department at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism and a 15-year CNN veteran, says networks must "cautiously mask the effects of what a dead person looks like."

"It's a matter of taste. It's up to each network to make that decision. You don't want to appeal to a prurient interest by showing something gruesome. We don't need to see maggots crawling over a dead person's skin."

According to Rosenstiel, the single most indelible image of the failure of FEMA and chaos in New Orleans last week was that of a dead elderly woman, alone and slumped in a wheelchair at the Convention Center.

"People were informed by that image. I don't think anybody was offended."

The only people who were offended were Bushco and their zombified loyalists because they couldn't control the pictures for a change (Hunter over at The Daily Kos called Bushco "unrepentant, syphilitic dog whores" yesterday. Whoa!).