War and journalism: The bloody truth must be documented

She’s 9 years old, running down the road, naked and screaming, with hell in her eyes and the… She’s 9 years old, running down the road, naked and screaming, with hell in her eyes and the devil behind her. She is the proof of insanity and evil in this world. She is a mirror held up to the soul of mankind. She is our messenger from the abyss. She is the truth.

I’m speaking of the young Vietnamese girl who was photographed in 1972 running from her village following a South Vietnamese napalm bombing raid.

To me this photograph offers one of the most compelling arguments for why journalists should be granted full and unfettered access to war zones.

War is real and awful. Men, women and children die. They lose limbs and burn. They blister, bleed and disintegrate. There is no romance or glory. There is only waste and death.

Without documentation the horrible truth remains in the fog. And without the truth there is no hope for change. The camera and the keyboard are far mightier than machine guns and missiles. They change minds. They end wars. They deliver justice.

The work of journalists has helped to indict war criminals in Nazi Germany and, most recently, in the former Yugoslavia.

It was the photographs, film clips and dispatches coming back every day from Vietnam that fueled the protest of the American public and eventually helped to bring our troops home.

It was the nauseating photograph of an American soldier being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu that forced our government to rethink its position in Somalia. Whether, strategically speaking, the decision to withdraw was the right one is not the issue. The photo was the truth and the American public had the right to know what was happening to its men and women in East Africa.

During the World War II, newspapers in North America and Europe gave little attention to reports of a mass extermination of Jews. More thorough and accurate coverage would have put the terror into the public eye, and perhaps saved thousands or millions lives.

From 1915 to 1916, approximately 1.5 million Turkish Armenians were murdered by the “Young Turk” government of the Ottoman Empire. This atrocity went largely undocumented.

On Dec. 9, 1937, the Japanese army initiated its Rape of Nanking. When it was over, 320,000 civilians were murdered, and 80,000 women were raped. Some Japanese politicians claim it never happened. But soldiers, civilians, and journalists took photographs and kept journals, so history cannot forget.

From 1975 to 1979, 20 percent of the Cambodian population – about two million people – was murdered during the regime of Pol Pot. Official photos, writings and other documents are just now being organized.

About 200,000 Christians were killed in East Timor from 1975 to 1999 and 200,000 Muslims were killed in Bosnia from 1995 to 1999. More than 1.7 million people have been murdered in the Democratic Republic of Congo since 1997. None of these atrocities were received thorough worldwide coverage.

In contrast, Sept. 11 was probably the most thoroughly documented act of war in history. In 500 years, people will still know exactly what happened that day. And for that they will be thankful.

In the last century, there was war and genocide on nearly every continent. Many of which have gone relatively undocumented. Millions of people were murdered and no one has been held accountable.

All arguments against accessibility for war journalists seem ridiculous in the face of such statistics.

Some argue journalists are a hindrance. Others say journalists leak sensitive material. Still others are ignorant enough to say they are unnecessary. Some say death should not be documented. I say, for the sake of life in the future, death, in all its horror, needs to be documented.

Ignorance is not bliss.

Soon the Middle East will erupt. And when it does I hope the greatest journalists in the world are there because I want to know. I want my children and grandchildren to know. I want you to know.

I want the pain and horror to be right up in our faces because war is not inevitable, and the human condition can change. It takes only two things: the truth, and a few courageous men and women to go out into the hell and find it.

Ben Magid is columnist for The Pitt News. He can be reached at bmagid@pittnews.com.