PressEthic

Several news sources have reported FEMA's request (some say, order) that photographers not take and relay images of those killed by Hurricane Katrina. There seems to be a reluctance to call it outright censorship, especially since many newspapers are carrying images anyway. But there are means of dissuading journalists -- and they are certainly being employed at the scene. In some cases, journalists are being barred access to various locations and, in others, as in the case of Toronto Star's Tim Harper and Lucas Oleniuk , they are actually being forced to hand over footage to the police.

FEMA justifies this 'request' by citing sensitivity to loved ones of the deceased. While this seems legitimate, I have to agree with those who see it as a ploy to control what we, the people, see. Several media experts have drawn parallels with the government's ban on showing caskets of dead American soldiers arriving back from Iraq, and earlier, Afghanistan. The truth is, the news is heavily sanitized. It is entirely possible to record images of a disaster like this without it being gruesome. Sure, nobody wants to see dead relatives' faces splashed across the front page of a paper, but that doesn't justify the omission of such an important part of what makes this event so terrible. And the government should not be asking the media to do that.

In fact, everybody needs to be shaken up a little. Sometimes, that's the only way to get people to react. I do not support unneccessarily gory coverage of any news story, but being unsettled can be a good thing. For instance, in 2002, there were terrible communal riots in the Indian state of Gujarat. There was an out and out massacre of Muslims in the state. Sitting several thousand miles away, it was sad to hear about the mounting death toll, yes. But it was not gut-wrenching until I saw a Reuters image , carried in The Hindu newspaper, of a Muslim man standing on his balcony with tear-filled eyes, pleading to the sword-brandishing mob below to spare his family. It was extremely upsetting, but it made me care.

Numbers don't say it all. Neither do words. Sometimes, it takes an image to make us really feel.