Skip to main content

Where Is Line Between The Public Right Vs. Privacy?


The media is all agog because the AP published a picture of Marine Lance Corporal Joshua Bernard as he lay mortally wounded by a rocket-propelled grenade in Afghanistan. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is incensed because the corporal’s father had requested that the picture not be published in order to avoid further grief to the family.
During the Bush administration news photographers were not allowed to photograph coffins returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Apparently it was not a good idea for the American people to discover how many good young men were dying for their country. It was as if our nation could fight two wars overseas while maintaining peace and tranquility at home. The Obama administration now allows such photographs to be taken provided the families of the deceased say it’s OK.
But this is a different case. The photo was taken in the field – there was no chance to get the family’s prior permission. It was taken along with many other photos of activity in the war zone that day.
Should it have been published in disregard of the family’s wishes? Which was more important? Spare the family more grief, or inform the public of the high cost in lives of this war. Should the AP have gone with what they considered the greatest good for the greatest number? If so, was publishing the picture really the greatest good?
This is one of those many dilemmas where I can appreciate both sides of the question. On one side, I think the public has been shielded too long from the horrors going on in Afghanistan. On the other hand, I can only imagine the family’s suffering.
An appeal to morality does not help. As a working definition I propose: Morality is an informal public system applying to all rational persons, governing behavior that affects others, and has the lessening of evil or harm as its goal.
Probably most rational persons world wide would agree on a few general moral principles, e.g. Killing people and stealing are wrong, etc. But within that code of morality there are institutional and personal systems that override the general system. Examples include slavery, the death penalty, killing abortion doctors to save lives, etc. in otherwise Christian nations. And of course there are those clerics who have allowed their morals to include pederasty.
Ethics, which involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong  is no help either. This generally consists of applying the “proper” morals to various fields of endeavor: health care, business, the environment, etc. It’s a sure bet that the ethics of news publication includes publishing news. Period.
One other thing: neither the Secretary of Defense, the news organization nor anyone else has the right to pre-censor news. I have to conclude that under the ethics of their profession, the AP had the obligation to publish the picture. It’s what they do. But it’s a tough call as to whether it’s moral. Depending upon your personal moral system, one way is right and the opposite way is wrong.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

There Are Only Seven Jokes - Introduction

      The statement “There are only seven jokes – all the rest are variations,” has been around for a long time, but no one ever seems to know what the original seven are. I think I have found the solution to the mystery.       The answer is to be found in an article published in the New York Times on May 2, 1909. Entitled “New Jokes? There Are No New Jokes, There Is Only One Joke,” it goes on to say that all jokes are a distortion, and lists seven categories of distortion. Supposedly every joke will fit into one of the categories. I believe that repetition changed the seven categories into the seven jokes.       Each of my next seven blogs will be devoted to exploring one of the categories. In addition, I shall attempt to give an example or two of jokes which I think fit the category.       You must realize that this article appeared over one hundred years ago, so most of the jokes appearing therein are so out-of-date that modern readers wouldn’t even understand them. For example,

By Today’s Standards Many of my Teachers Would be in Jail

I started school in a two-room building: grades 1 to 4 in one room; grades 5 to 8 in the other. One teacher in each room taught all four grades. I don’t remember first grade very well – the teacher left at the end of the year. I am pretty sure it was not my fault. Now keep in mind that reading the Bible every morning was the standard for all grades at that time. But my teacher in grades two to four went a little above and beyond the normal practice. As a member of a “plain” sect, she considered it her duty to lead the little heathens to Christianity. She offered a free Bible to all students who managed to memorize 20 verses. I memorized my verses – “Jesus saves” was my favorite because it was the shortest – and got my Bible with my twenty underlined in red. That would be illegal today (not the underlining), and rightly so. Teachers may not teach religion, although contrary to what many folks seem to think, students may bring their Bibles to school, read them, and pray their
The National Anthem I have a somewhat minor pet peeve. I say minor because in the grand scheme of things neither I nor society will do anything substantive about it, so my best bet is probably to suck it up and move on. Perhaps after writing about it I can lay it to rest. It came up recently while I was working out at our Wellness Center. A program on television was playing America The Beautiful , and I remarked to a lady I have known for 40 years that I thought that should be the National Anthem instead of The Star Spangled Banner. She replied, rather huffily, I thought, “Some people think God Bless America should be the national anthem.” At that point I decided, wisely, I think, to back off before an argument sprang up. Now I realize that The Star Spangled Banner is a very nice, patriotic song, but an anthem it is not. According to Wikipedia, “ An anthem is a  musical composition  of celebration, usually used as a symbol for a distinct group, particularly the  nationa