The College of Santa Fe's Slippery Slopes: Ethical Dilemmas for the Contemporary World lecture series got on its belly and slid all the way down the hill at its April 14 installment, "Witness: The Ethics of War Photography."
Following a presentation of images captured by photojournalist Thomas Dworzak, CSF Documentary Studies Director Tony O'Brien moderated a conversation with Dworzak and TIME Magazine photography editor MaryAnne Golon that became, especially once it was opened to the audience for questions, less about the ethics of war and more about the fog of media.
It was a compelling presentation that left more questions than answers-no crime in that-but also frustratingly skirted several engaging topics by virtue of an unintentional
conspiracy of ineffectiveness arranged between the jaded media mindset of the presenters and the audience's inability to distinguish between ethics and morals.
One topic left wholly untouched was the justification for why the most significant body of work shown by Dworzak as a demonstration of "war" photography was of New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina. I can imagine all sorts of justifications. Perhaps there was a forgotten disclaimer that natural disasters are similar to war in
circumstance and ethical situations for photojournalists. Maybe the conduct of police and military and the lackluster federal response to Katrina amounted to class and race warfare against a marginalized populace. These are just speculations, but it would have been interesting to hear the actual motivation for the inclusion of those images.
Another body of work by Dworzak-described simply as a "project" in progress dubbed
M*A*S*H: Iraq
-flashes between images of the TV series spinoff from Robert Altman's film and his own digital images of the current war, particularly the work of contemporary medics. Each of the television stills is caught with the captioning enabled so that the remarks of Hawkeye, Radar, BJ, et al., appear as wry commentary on the state of armed conflict.
The ensuing discussion likewise avoided much further mention of this "project" that had hung a few questions in the air, the first of which being whether it is either unethical or immoral of Dworzak to inflict a poorly recorded cover version of "Suicide Is Painless" (the theme song to
M*A*S*H
, written by Robert Altman's then 14-year-old son, Mike Altman), by the Manic Street Preachers, upon us as a soundtrack. Not once, but looped three times. Ouch. But the more critical question, to paraphrase a local painter who joined me for a beer afterward, is this: What the hell was that supposed to be? Art? Commentary? Journalism? We may never know. The only certainty is the regrettable fact that Dworzak, a highly skilled photographer, appears to have been working for at least two years on this project, which any preteen could replicate given 20 minutes and a copy of iPhoto.
The panelists also glossed right over the issue of embedded reporters in the Iraq war. They claimed the only restriction for embedded photojournalists is the "reasonable" agreement to withhold publication of images of identifiable dead soldiers for 48 hours-allowing the military enough time to notify the families. I would argue that embedding is far more problematic, but more interesting than the details of that debate was the audience response.
The most vocal members of the audience could not have cared less about a situation in which the freedom of the media might be restricted; rather, there was an intense and emotional suggestion that such restrictions should be more, rather than less, common. This is in line with polling of the public over the past few years that indicates little opposition to government censorship of the media. But it's one thing to understand it in the abstract and another to see a group of people express the desire, albeit in an unfocused way-especially in Santa Fe, which usually trips over its liberalism.
Many audience members felt that sensationalism, especially as a motivation to greater profits, is the driving force behind the publication of shocking images, such as dead bodies or people leaping from the twin towers on 9.11, and their hostility toward the media in expressing it was palpable in the room. Both Golon and Dworzak responded comfortably-obviously accustomed to such accusations-by claiming their own modest salaries as defense and sympathizing with the emotions of the crowd. Which, of course, is a cop-out on both counts. The mainstream media, TIME Magazine most certainly included, is engaged in a competitive frenzy that does come down to advertising revenue, and the big money involved has little relationship to Golon's salary and even less to Dworzak's. In fact, Golon's argument that she's not in it for the money does journalism a disservice by not explaining to an uninformed public the ethical necessity of a wall between editorial content and advertising revenue.
More troubling is that Golon and Dworzak did little to explain that, while the public may feel morally outraged by the publication of shocking photographs, the press remains ethically compelled to report and represent the facts and conditions of the world as they exist. Dworzak did respond, somewhat aghast, that he hoped people realize that acts of war and torture and people being forced to leap from buildings are, in and of themselves, more horrifying than photographs taken of these events. He sees it as his job-and correctly-to chronicle these events; what the public chooses to do in response is up to the public. Sadly, we appeared to be proving that what we really want from the media is that old saw of "positive and upbeat" stories. It sounds nice on the surface, but it's a poor feint for disguising that we just don't want to hear bad news, because we're too lazy to do anything about it.
But then, what's the easier path for a nation that spends 42.2 percent of its tax revenue on military spending and 3.6 percent on education (no budget for media literacy courses)? Do we change our entrenched ways or do we get angry when the media, fulfilling its implied obligation as a constitutionally protected entity, shows us, in full color, what exactly we've wrought?
