I apologize to anyone who already knows this story. I am four years late to the party, but I think this is exactly the kind of ethical issue that we, as a media-dominated society, need to be discussing. I wasn’t living here during the last presidential election, when a Web site called IowaPresidentialWatch.com—which, ironically, claimed to be protecting the public from John Kerry’s propaganda—ran this graphic.
The thing is, the photo had been doctored. Here’s the original, taken in 2004 by Damir Sagolj of Reuters and nominated for a Pulitzer Prize:
The photo shows a U.S. medic holding an Iraqi child who had been shot—in an attack that killed her mother and wounded her father. But apparently this child did not quite illustrate the artist's political message, which was that American soldiers provide security to Iraqi children. Thus, the political graphic shows the face of a totally different child who, it seems, could muster up an expression more closely resembling gratitude, or at least well-being. Additionally, some blood has been removed from the child’s clothing, and some kind of medical device that was near the child’s neck has been removed.
Think about that for a minute. This child's suffering—her loss of a parent, her injuries, her terror—meant so little to the artist that she felt free to superimpose a different child, one who had a more neutral expression and a healthier glow, to score a political point. What a dehumanizing act, to simply erase a child's face when that child's experience doesn't serve your political purpose.
I have no doubt that the woman who designed the image would say the child's suffering is the whole point—that's why we Americans are in Iraq, to prevent that kind of suffering. So to the extent that this political message serves that purpose, it's helping the cause; it's preventing more children from suffering, which makes it OK. That's how her argument would go.
But here's the issue: Who has a right to that image? Is it our right as artists, as communicators, to exploit and alter someone else's photograph of someone else's suffering in someone else's country for the purposes of an American presidential campaign? To say this child, who just watched her mother die and is living through a war that Americans started, is "glad" Americans are there?
If you want to read more about this photo and graphic, check out PR Watch here and Daily Kos here.
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