The Power of Pictures

"By many accounts, the horrible treatment of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. soldiers and mercenaries has been going on ever since the end of the invasion," notes Dan Gillmor. "The Red Cross warned U.S. officials a year ago. Yet it took those appalling photographs to turn this into the huge story that it's become. Which raises some questions: Suppose the Americans hadn't bothered to take pictures of each other in that infamous prison? Suppose they'd just gone on abusing the prisoners without cameras? Does a story exist without pictures?" And Tim Porter makes an interesting observation about the vanishing role of the mass media in unearthing the story. "The two biggest recent stories to emerge from the Iraq - the administration's don't-show-don't-know policy toward the photographing of military caskets and the puerile abuses by Army reservists inside Abu Ghraib prison - were based on digital photographs not made by journalists but by participants in both stories." According to the Associated Press, this reflects "a defining fact of 21st century life," as "the pervasiveness of digital photography and the speed of the Internet make it easier to see into dark corners previously out of reach for the mass media."