Open Letter to Deborah Howell
Dear Ms. Howell,
According to my friend and colleague Richard Blair, the Washington Post has elected not to publish recent
photos from Iraq that depict “a young boy with a picture of a helicopter on his pajamas, slumped over, his face and head covered in blood. There is a mother lying on a bed, arms splayed, the bodies of three young children huddled against her right side. There are men with gaping head wounds, and a woman and a child hunkered down on their knees, their hands frozen around their faces as if permanently bracing for an attack.”
Yet, “Post editors decided that most of the images are too graphic to publish.”
Ms. Howell, life can be an ugly thing. But what would the historical record be without images of the liberation of Auschwitz, the little girl running from a US napalm attack in Viet Nam, Kennedy’s assasination, or the image of civil rights protestors attacked by Bull Connor’s dogs?
Ms. Howell, your newspaper’s editorial page has been frequently criticized for its knee-jerk support of the war, flogging the adminsitration’s now-discredited claims of “WMD.” I do not believe the Post has ever come clean about its poor reporting. Many of your writers to this day, such as Anne Applebaum, Charles Krauthammer, Fred Hiatt, and George Will, have never acknowledged that they were wrong about Iraq from the get-go.
On Wednesday, the President is expected to announce that he will escalate the war in Iraq, which nearly everyone agrees is not what the American people voted for. More soldiers will be put in harm’s way to fight for… well, I don’t think anyone’s sure anymore. More children will surely die as a result. Please explain why your paper chooses to shield the American people from images of the consequences of a war they no longer support?
Judging from the recent record of the Washington Post on matters pertaining to the war and its conduct, I fear the Post has deliberately decided to participate in misleading the American people in service of a neoconservative agenda that the publisher Donald Graham embraces privately, but dares not espouse publicly for fear of rank condemnation. By refusing to publish these photos (and burying the article itself on page A14), you are doing the nation a grave disservice by hiding the consequences of this war, consequences that all acknowledge will haunt the United States and Americans for decades to come.
While I can understand the Post’s reluctance to publish the photos (it is, after all, difficult to admit when one has made a mistake, and more difficult still to admit that mistake publicly), I cannot condone such behavior. As members of the Fourth Estate, you are responsible to more than just your advertiser’s bottom line and your own egos: you are responsible to the American people to tell the truth.
Please note that this letter will appear on my blog, Brendan Calling. I look forward to your prompt response. I’m sure there is a more compelling reason to hide these photos than the tender sensitivities of the American public, which you must admit are not particularly tender given the nation’s inital embrace of the Iraq invasion.
Brendan Skwire
One Response to “Open Letter to Deborah Howell”
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January 10th, 2007 at 12:00 am
what, you’re not going to tell her to lick your balls?
you’ve changed man.
you’ve changed.