No credibility gap in massacre pictures

There are certain words that carry more weight than pictures: “mutilated,” “insurgents,”… There are certain words that carry more weight than pictures: “mutilated,” “insurgents,” “bodies.” These are just a few of the thousands of words dedicated to reporting the recent deaths of four American contractors in Falluja, Iraq. The four contractors were burned, their bodies mutilated, dragged through the streets and then hung.

And accompanying words such as these are pictures — of crowds cheering, of violence, of humans celebrating the deaths of other humans.

Already, according to a Reuters report, some news sources have tried to tone these pictures down, but thanks to the Internet, they are available to all who seek them.

The same report quotes a former CNN correspondent, who’s now a professor at the University of Delaware, as saying that Falluja has the potential to form a credibility gap. “It would be interesting to see if this is … a turning point where people start to think that the Bush administration’s arguments that things in Iraq are generally going well do not match what they are seeing on TV.”

Yet there isn’t a credibility gap here. It’s a gap between those who access these images — and whose views on the war may or may not change resultantly — and those who don’t.

During the Vietnam War, a credibility gap arose between what was reported and what wasn’t, which caused many to question the United States’ role there. Whether images were not shown because the media was exercising discretion, or underreporting, people felt that they were not getting the full story.

Falluja, however, is not like Vietnam. Rather than plastering the front page with images, media outlets can put them on the Internet, which, in this case, is a workable medium between underreporting and being disrespectful towards the families of the victims. On the Washington Post’s Web site, for instance, a slideshow of images from Falluja comes with the warning that some images might be violent or disturbing to viewers.

Falluja is also being compared to the events in Mogadishu, Somalia, in which 18 U.S. troops were killed during a humanitarian operation. Footage of this may have swayed the Clinton administration into pulling troops from Somalia and from subsequent actions.

Now, however, the Bush administration has dedicated itself to staying the course, with the chief U.S. military spokesman calling the attacks, “bestial,” according to The Washington Post.

How the images of these attacks will affect the Iraqi occupation, and the public’s opinion of it, remains to be seen. For now, at least, the media seems to be bridging the credibility gap.