Panel to Unwrap Images of War
-- from Iraq and the Homefront
by Fred Blevens
David Leeson, a Dallas Morning News photographer and
co-winner of the 2004 Pultizer Prize for breaking news photography, will
headline a Newspaper Division PF&R panel titled "Messages Wrapped in a
Flag: The News Media and the Images of War and Patriotism."
Leeson, a Morning News senior staff photographer since 1984,
has been a Pulitzer finalist twice. He shared the 2004 prize with Cheryl Diaz
Meyer. The Pulitzer Committee commended Leeson and Meyer for making "eloquent photographs
depicting both the violence and poignancy of the war with Iraq."
The session, scheduled 5-6:30 p.m. on Friday, August 6,
includes C. Zoe Smith, Missouri; Carolyn Kitch, Temple; and Michael Sweeney,
Utah State. The moderator is Fred Blevens, Oklahoma.
Since the 9-11
terrorist attacks and the subsequent war in Iraq, journalists have grappled
with challenges to the traditional values of fair, balanced and dispassionate
reporting. The purpose of the "Messages Wrapped in a Flag" panel is to examine
the struggle with the images of war -- those from the battlefield and those on
the home front.
During the past
year, the patriotic post-9/11 images have turned from stark and emotional,
promoting unity and patriotism, to gruesome and horrific pictures, intensifying
the apprehension and anxiety of war. In rapid succession, Americans were
exposed to photos of flag-draped coffins, the beheading of an American
contractor in Iraq, and the
brutal behavior of American prison guards in Iraq. These followed by two years
the still and moving pictures of World
Trade Center
victims jumping to death, the comparative photos of the before-and-after
cityscape, the flag-draped coffins of fallen
firefighters.
What effects are
these and other images related to terrorism and war likely to have on our
collective memory and how do they frame the thinkable and unthinkable? How does
this digitized version of war compare visually with others over time? What is
the government's role and interest in maintaining control over the images of
war and terrorism? Are the fundamental issues -- moral, legal, political -- the
same now as during Vietnam,
the world wars, the Civil War?
Other
Panels, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday