Publishing Photos of Collateral Damage

Reaper drone (Source: The Guardian)

Last week someone left a comment on one of The Second Age's Facebook page posts about publishing graphic photographs like those taken at the Boston Marathon bombing. My argument in the post about showing the world the horror of that day and other tragedies was that it would allow the true devastation that occurred to be realized by the public. I said that editing photos or not releasing photos because they may be too graphic runs the risk of toning down the public response to the horror.

The comment left made a valid point: "Only if they also publish photos of 'collateral damage' from Predator Drones. Fair and balanced." [Quick editorial note: Because the comment was left on my personal Facebook page, I'm not going to link directly to it in case the commenter did not want his statement put up on the blog.] I agree that publishing photos of the human toll that the ever-expanding drone war that the Obama administration has undertaken would be a service to the public to help people understand on a visceral level exactly what we are doing in non-war zones in sovereign countries.