In a world where nothing is private and the most vulgar images and ideas are bandied about with little concern, is there a place for keeping photos like that of the death of Osama bin Laden private? Der Tagesspiegel columnist Juliane Schauble writes that when it comes to holding the moral high ground on the public’s right to know, President Obama is a cut about George W. Bush.
For Der Tagesspiegel, Juliane Schauble writes in part:
People have become accustomed to seeing brutal, blood-soaked images. The threshold for showing dead bodies, seriously injured and even maimed people on television, the Internet and in newspapers, is steadily dropping. In the Internet age, nothing is secret, maximum transparency being the currency of the modern world. And even if we don’t desire it, transparency will eventually come to be. Resistance is futile.
But that doesn’t liberate responsible parties from an obligation to pose the question of whether or what should be published in each new case, as much for esthetic as for ethical reasons.
A picture is worth a thousand words. The Bible tells us that people must see in order to believe. But unlike in centuries past, displaying a defeated opponent no longer receives applause. Such displays are repulsive to us, just like George W. Bush’s rumored order to his CIA chief, “Capture bin Laden, kill him and bring his head back in a box on dry ice …”
Obama has set out to distinguish himself from his predecessor, not only by his actions, but by his morality. With his decision not to put bin Laden’s head on a pike and carry it through the media landscape, he has done just that. For there’s a difference between the images of a killed “most wanted” eventually filtering through to the public and when a hunter triumphantly shows off a trophy. Most likely, Obama recalled the intense criticism directed at Donald Rumsfeld when the former Defense Secretary, in order to eliminate any remaining doubts about their deaths, released images of the dead sons of Saddam Hussein.
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